1st Universal Micronations Exhibition
17 – 19 June
www.sonar.es/2004/eng/sonarmatica.cfm muu.fi/amorph03/
(1st Summit of Micronations)

www.krev.org/
(Elgaland-Vargaland)

www.sealandgov.com/
(Sealand)

www.evru.org/
(Evrugo Mental State)

www.laibach.nsk.si/
(NSK)

www.ladonia.net/
(Ladonia)

Annexed to the main site of Sónar, patrolled by guards and wadded from the epic sonorisation of the ‘advanced music’ all around, representatives of nations as far afield as Elgaland, Vargaland and Evrugo have gathered in Barcelona for the ‘1st Universal Micronations Exhibition’. Following on from the ‘1st Summit of Micronations’ in Helsinki in 2003, the exhibition collects diverse projects which are focused around declarations, manifestations and activities of self-declared and self-governing ‘micronation’ states, although in what sense they are ‘micro-’ is not immediately evident. One state declares itself to be the largest nation on earth and another is in a state of constant expansion towards, presumably, global citizenship (at least for anyone who can afford the 40 euro administration fee).

Ranging from established to newer states, documentations are presented, trade-fair or jumble-sale style, in various formats from performances of bureaucratic procedure to video documentation and interactive websites. The exhibition, alongside a programme of debates and talks, provides a space for the projects to collide and perhaps collude. Their common ground is an engagement with the changing role of the nation state in the wake of shifts in power structures, increases in transnational movement and new forms of metanational sovereignty induced by global capitalism.





As an unwitting part of the micronational architecture, guards perform their authority methodically, checking wristbands, creating queues, filtering and restricting flows of visitors. The site is assiduously maintained as an enclosed space – part of, yet separate to, the surrounding music festival. I am sent to stamp my ticket in another area and then sent back as the appropriate official is nowhere to be found. Removed from the comfortable sensory overload of the audio-visual, my body is quickly forced into the broken rhythms of administrative bureaucracy, slowness, emptiness, silence.

The strict performance of bureaucracy continues between the nations’ stands in an array of forms, fees, languages, mistranslations and administrative unease. Work is presented in a prosaic, neat and organised fashion; there is an overload of heavily text-based, wall-mounted displays and unmanned information desks with leaflets, maps and facts. Muted discussions and stale air are shunted around by chugging fans. People are sitting, waiting.

The tone of the exhibition is deeply serious but also playful. Christian Yankowlef’s portraits of heads of micronations serving as documentation of the Helsinki summit are absurd in their grandeur and pomposity. They suggest a simultaneous desire to maintain the rigidity of authority while also mocking its own pretensions, as if at any moment they will cast aside their uniforms and start laughing at you for falling for their stupid joke. It is this disjunction that produces a terrifying effect.

Projects investigate the gap and contradictions between ‘nation’ as physical territory and as imagined community. They also consider, through an excess of the ritualistic trappings of authority, the role of historical fictions necessary to legitimate and maintain their existence. In what sense is a nation any more than its anthem? The Principality of Sealand, for example, represented here mainly through information boards and application forms, was founded in 1967, six miles off the UK coast in a disused WWII fortress. It established itself on the principle that any groups of people dissatisfied with oppressive laws and restrictions could declare independence in a place not under jurisdiction of a sovereign entity, issue passports and provide residence for its absolute sovereign ‘Roy of Sealand’. In 1968, according to the land’s official history, it ran up against the claims of the British Navy. Roy was arrested and tried in a British court for firing shots in defence of his territory. In a landmark ruling however, the court declared that they had no jurisdiction over a state existing in international waters. UK territory didn’t stretch far enough, and the Principality was officially recognised.

Other projects engage with the notion of territory in different ways. The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, a project by Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren, are formed by a proclamation to annex all border frontier areas between countries: its territory is that between already existing states. Represented in the exhibition very matter-of-factly, with a map of Spain coloured red around its borders, and a sealed declaration, Elgaland-Vargaland draws attention to the line, the strip or wall, that not only marks territory but actively produces it: the width of pencil that creates no-man’s land on maps and the limits of its own opaque eventhood. While emphasising the arbitrary nature of these lines, is not the decision to settle on borders ultimately an acknowledgement of their authority? Drawing attention to physical territorial borders can also be a way to distract attention from other forms of borders. The second part of the project, although undefined, hints at ways to go beyond this, focusing on ‘mental and perceptive territories’. Evrugo Mental State exists only in constant motion, avoiding the sealed staticity of conventional utopias. In fitting with a play on the national symbols and bureaucratic convention, it installs here an ‘Office of Migratory Flux’.

In what sense then, and to what effect, can such micronations run into and change existing ‘real’ economies, authorities and procedures? ‘Fake’ Sealand passports were sold to Hong Kong residents after Chinese re-occupation and quickly denounced by Sealand officials. Authenticity is produced as a relative concept. Its first principle being the defence of its physical territory, Sealand was quick to establish itself as ‘authentic’, exclusive and ultimately, paradoxically, ‘not real’, subject to the space and limitations of the art object.

While questioning and pushing the boundaries of the space of the artwork the micronations here are all ultimately framed, collected and limited exactly as ‘art’. Often the only point of intersection with real social conditions comes with economies of currency exchange. The fees (in euros) for citizenship contrast with the micronational currencies, which have little or no exchange value, and serve rather to reinforce the legitimacy of the ‘official’ currency.

It is art however – play, fiction and friction – redrawing the lines of exchange, which could also offer the vitality and potentiality to transcend these limitations. Walking around the exhibition it is hard to get a sense of how these projects run and work, but perhaps these limits of documentation are also the limits and foundations of the nation itself. Through its layout, the exhibition draws attention to the micro-details of nation, the small print of application forms, which delineate borders and laws of citizenship. It is these forms that have life outside of the nation, power to move beyond its confines into other economies. Ultimately, like documentary fiction, all nations practise an art of the disclaimer: ‘You can have citizenship but…’, which defines its limits as an entity. Lars Vilk’s Ladonia, for example, dealt with asylum applications through a simple addendum, ‘NB: There is no possibility to receive work or living in Ladonia. Neither visa.’

Micronations are thus forced to engage with the paradox of limited citizenship. To see them gathered here together raises the question: a sovereign state can have ‘supreme authority’ over its citizens. However, if the very concept of ‘citizenship’ is necessarily limited by disclaimers, then there will always be an excess which does not fit into its structure. A state then can never have full control over its ‘limited’ citizens. Therefore is not all sovereignty ultimately a form of ‘limited sovereignty’ ? To stake a claim (in territory, nationhood, art, selfhood) entails investing a stake in the process of disclaiming. As this exhibition importantly shows in a variety of interesting ways, ‘to disclaim’ is both to renounce a claim and also to refuse the validity of authority. The ‘universal exhibition of micronations’ is ultimately a contentious and delicate art of the disclaimer and, as in any production of nation (State of Sabotage, Sealand, Palestine, Iraq), how far its effect can reach depends on how much or how little (or just how) you are prepared to disclaim.