NOWs: Atlas Europe Square. A book by Yves Mettler

Atlas Europe Square. A book by Yves Mettler

Call for action

Dear friends, colleagues and supporters,

I am currently working on a comprehensive book about my Europe Square project. The project is well advanced, with the documentation and the contributions coming together in an overwhelmingly inspiring layout. Altough three quarters of the budget is secured, I’m now calling on to you to get the final buck.

In order to complete the budget, I launch an exclusive numbered edition of 30 posters. On the background of an installation shot made in Daejeon, South Korea, I release the as exhaustive as possible list of Europe Squares in the world. The 100 x 70cm poster is printed in Berlin on Hahnemühle Photo Luster paper.

The price is 350.- EUR (without shipping costs). The purchase includes the signed book, which will be sent once it’s out. The order can be placed directly by writing to yvesmettler@theselection.net, including the delivery address. I’ll send an invoice that can be paid by IBAN/BIC or Paypal. Upon receiving the payment I’ll be delighted to send the numbered and signed poster.

Thank you,

Yves Mettler

About the book:
Atlas Europe Square

If the built environment is a record of our modes of organisation and the compromises we make in order to live together, then what are we to make of the plethora of Europe Squares, Europa Places, Places de l’Europe, and Europaplatzes? Public spaces that connect numerous disparate towns and cities through a ‘supersite’ called Europe, today they may appear as avatars of an idea in crisis, as ‘eurocentric values’ and the concept of Europe as a unified political space are attacked and eroded from all sides.
Atlas Europe Square documents a body of work by Swiss artist Yves Mettler who, since 2003, has engaged in an ongoing mapping and documentation of these sites, along with a series of projects triangulating between particular squares, interrogating their differing architectural, environmental, and public functions, and what they tell us about the ideality of ‘Europe’ and the (im)possibility of its concrete instantiation.
Here this work is extended into reflections on the relationship between art and public space, site-specificity, and the artist’s own implication in the imaginary of Europe as he becomes enmeshed in a network of projects, funds, and public bodies that seek to promote ‘European culture’ through art.
Alongside extensive photographic documentation, Atlas Europe Square contains texts by the artist alongside texts by Reza Negarestani, Teresa Pullano, Laurent Thévenot, and Stephen Zepke, discussing Mettler’s work and addressing the question of how to square ‘Europe’ with the contemporary complex that connects the city to the nation state and the global economy.

Contributors
Reza Negarestani, Teresa Pullano, Laurent Thévenot, Stephen Zepke

Published by
Urbanomic Ltd., Falmouth, UK.

Design
Dual Room, Biel/Bienne

Printed in
Italy

Distributed by
MIT Press

With the support of
Pro Helvetia, Erna und Curt Burgauer Stiftung, Canton de Vaud

Release date

April 2021