Vive la république européenne? Reading The European Balcony Project as artistic counter-public

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article first contextualizes the European Balcony Project (EBP), a manifesto written by authors Ulrike Guérot, Robert Menasse, and theatre director Milo Rau who subsequently put it up for discussion in various public fora. On 10 November 2018, artists and citizens performed the manifesto and proclaimed the European Republic from (theatre) balconies and public places in 25 European countries. They encouraged a dialogue that sought to promote a more diverse public sphere. In my reading, the EBP emerges as a contemporary version of Oskar Negt’s and Alexander Kluge’s public counter sphere, as a real and imaginary community in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk in an arena of discursive interaction and democratic practice. By reading the texts in the context of a political avantgarde project, I show how the interventions aim to set a counterpoint to the resurgence of nationalism and promote a vision of a democratic continent based in shared values. My article thus illustrates how public art performances such as the EBP contribute to the thickening of imaginative relations throughout Europe and might aid in the construction of a larger European cultural identity.