“Europe — I love you”
Mia Florentine Weiss
“My great love is a woman. Her name is Europe and she is ancient. This Grande Dame has wings and roots. She is deeply anchored in the spirit of the antiquity, and she has been shaped over the years by mass migrations, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, two World Wars and, of course, by her multifaceted inhabitants. Europe has always been a fighter. At all times, she has shown courage, endurance and the will to survive. She has never given up. She has honed her weapons — which include enlightenment, humanism and democracy — over the course of centuries. Her wings symbolise freedom and progress. Experience and curiosity have made her what she is today. According to the legend, Europe is a female refugee abducted to Crete by Zeus in the guise of a white bull. It is a metaphor that takes on a double meaning in the 21st century, especially in view of the current movement of refugees. Quo vadis, EUROPE? Back in the day, you were a young girl who got carried away over the sea. Today, you are a strong woman who knows how to learn from her mistakes. You are someone who no longer has any fear of the future. And now, my dear, you now must grab the bull by the horns — in the truest sense of the phrase — and help us change course. We need your strength, your wisdom, your European energy and your devotion to us, your human children. You bring us together — in all of our diversity — to form a unity. EUROPE. Your mother earth is our mother earth. You are my home. I love you!”
“Here I am human, here is where I want to be!”
As a woman, artist, artivist and mother, I experience Europe as a kind of primal uterus that feeds my artistic hunger and my cultural identity through its umbilical cord. This sustenance ranges from the spirit of Goethe, the categorical imperative and the strong euro currency to unlimited freedom, free Interrail travel, the naturist movement (FKK), cultural hubs and mother earth in the form of the many-sided regions that make up Europe. “Here I am human, here is where I want to be!”
Handful of Europe
A milestone in my work over the past three years is a Europe-focused project called HANDFUL OF EUROPE. It will be carried out under the curatorial direction of Paul Spies. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty, I will transform the church nave at the Museum Nikolaikirche into a universal crossroads of encounters. The mound of earth at the centre of the walk-in installation will consist of earth taken from 47 European countries, and I will personally bring this earth to Berlin. Various media will join me on my performative trip under the motto HANDFUL OF EUROPE, thus providing an opportunity for interactive participation. The goal of the exhibition and the pro-European interdisciplinary social media campaign is to create synergies and multipliers so that the educational mandate for the preservation of the European idea can grow and attract new target groups. Europe at the crossroads? It begins with the seemingly simple gesture of laying a cross in a church, yet in the end visitors will be invited to discover Europe in a handful of earth.
Together and united for Europe
Keywords: no boundaries. Even as an artist, I would say art alone is not enough. In addition to the Minister for Digitalisation, Dorothee Bär, I work with Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s Senator for Culture and European Affairs, as well as with numerous foundations that foster Europe programmes: Stiftung Zukunft Berlin carries out A SOUL FOR EUROPE (the only contact point for cultural creators) and the Schwarzkopf Foundation “Junges Europa” operates the EUROPEAN YOUTH PROGRAMME. There are also valuable projects highlighting European unity being done by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) and the Junge Europäische Föderalisten (JEF), but also innovations such as the FREE Interrail by Heer & Speer.
Keywords: publicity and attention. How can we get teenagers — especially those who are bored and turned off by politics — to leave their lethargy behind and get involved? We need images that can foster a movement, and we need messages that can reach people in the form of avowals of devotion to Europe. One example is my ambigram sculpture “LOVE HATE”. This series of joined letters can be read from one side as LOVE and from the other as HATE. This work not only represents our Faustian nature as human beings, that is, the dualism of our souls and the limits of human feelings; it also represents a new change of perspective in relation to Europe and social change. The message of the piece calls on people to switch sides and steer in a new direction! Turn HATE into LOVE!
Mia Florentine Weiss (*1980 Würzburg) is a performative conceptual artist born in Germany. Her work encompasses various artistic disciplines such as performance, text, blood, installation, sculpture, objéts trouves, photography and film.
