The Imaginative Struggles of Europe

This paper examines a number of works of art that relate to the issues of borders, mobility, space and place in Britain and the European Union (EU). It focuses on the years 2014–16 in which the financial crisis, the migration crisis and the impending referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU weighed heavily upon public debate. Some of the works considered—installations by the Italian group The Tomorrow and by Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture—can be related directly to the EU’s own initiatives: specifically, the New Narrative for Europe that was championed by the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. Others—stencilled murals by the street artist Banksy in Clacton-on-Sea and Calais—approach the issue of Europe more obliquely. All of the works, it is argued, engage in forms of visual and spatial thinking that bear upon the idea of Europe and its much-discussed imaginary.