Temporary Autonomous Zone

I though I would add some more information on the flag of Christiania seeing as it has been important to my development of this project and already mentioned as a model in one of the comments below.

Christiania, Denmark

The general interpretation for the three dots on the Christiania flag is that they stand for the three ‘i’s in Christiania. This is of course entirely logical but I wonder if it is an act of retro-fitting; it is possibly too neat a solution and it certainly sounds a bit too prosaic. Another interpretation I have heard is that the dots stand for the hippy mantra of ‘peace, love and unity’.

In the Buckingham and Koester video Three Dots & Sandra of the Tulip House or How To Live in a Free State (2001), an alternative interpretation is put forward: That the flag is based on that of the Dutch pirate Jan Janzsoon who raided the coasts of Europe from the Republic of Salé in Algiers during the 17th century.

Flag of Jan Janzsoon

Buckingham and Koester also link the three dots to the ellipsis (…) the pause in speech or the omission in the text: This fits with the idea of Christiania being outside of the normal space of Danish society, acting both as a physical and psychic dis-continuum. For me the point is that none of these answers are definite or authoritative but all add to the exegesis – that within the imagery there is room for interpretation based on your personal relationship with the iconography.

Christiania, Denmark

The other key thing with the flag of Christiania is that it is everywhere, it has become like a brand marking the territory – clothing, buildings and bikes are all marked with the three yellow dots on red.

Christiania, Denmark

I have been researching some possible ideas for symbolism to include in the flag:

Firstly; a Hopi symbol for ‘universal brotherhood’ (seeing as Hopi society was matrilineal I guess there is something lost in translation here) The least complex of these three icons but I do like the simplicity of it.

Brotherhood

Secondly; a map icon for ‘village’ from a Japanese treatise on warfare – this links to a similar European symbol of two entwined hoops, meaning joined or married. I like the play on this; the idea of extending the link beyond the exclusive and inward looking relationship and into a wider social bond.

Village

Thirdly; the eight pointed star of Ishtar/Astarte, the ancient middle-eastern goddess of war and love, she was the morning star and evening star (the planet Venus). This powerful figure was transformed in Greek mythology into two figures, Athena for war and Aphrodite for love, simplifying the complex dialectic that Ishtar/Astarte represented. I was attracted to this idea as the five pointed star that has been carried over into western iconography as a military symbol; originally represented the decoupled Athena as war goddess, while the eight pointed star has disappeared from western symbolism.

Ishtar/Astarte

(The symbols and their interpretations are after Carl G. Liungman)

Here are some images from the declaration of a Temporary Autonomous Zone at the IT department of a UK university.

IT Dapartment TAZ

IT Department TAZ

Because of the time constraints on the project I would like people to start putting up design ideas on the blog, I have already received one suggestion via email;

“cool! hopefully the flag ends up looking like a flag and not a designed-by-consensus patchwork quilt …”

my response; on aesthetic grounds i hope that too but it is up to everyone to decide. To start the process off here is a Temporary Autonomous Zone flag that i have already designed:

TAZ flag with Korean script

It was part of a proposal for a project in Korea, the symbolism is basic – the circle for wholeness, community etc. green for the environment, black for anarchism (it is also the near opposite in colour and layout terms of the South Korean flag – which is white with black text and a red and blue Taegukgi (ying-yang) in the centre).

I will put up more ideas soon…

The proposal put forward by the artwork Temporary Autonomous Zone is to design a flag for the Market Estate Project. This is intended to act as a focal point for political considerations around the project. All participants in the project are invited to get involved in the discussions around this design.

This will begin with a workshop, followed by a party where all the artists involved in the project can meet each other, throughout the evening material will be available for everyone to put forward flag designs. Following on from this event the designs put forward will be developed further and everyone will have the opportunity to vote on what the final option will be.

In the meantime please use this blog as an area to discuss these questions and put forward any initial ideas on the design of our flag.

I therefore propose the flag as:

• An embodiment of the Market Estate Temporary Autonomous Zone
• A support and validation of our embryonic ‘state’
• A futile gesture of solidarity

NB. Although the workshop and voting will only be for those people taking part in the project anyone is more than welcome to contribute ideas to this blog.

The Temporary Autonomous Zone was an idea theorised by the American writer Hakim Bey in the early eighties (see resources). He based the concept on transitory sites of resistance; the argument being that temporary structures can resist the invasive nature of power more effectively than the more traditional methods of counter-organisation. These ideas got taken up by various party-activist groups involved in new forms of protest, such as Reclaim the Streets and the anti-capitalism movement, and by the developing rave scene. This opened it to obvious criticisms of lifestyle-ism rather than being a serious programme of political change.

In this instance (the Market Estate Project) the temporary autonomous zone is an obvious model for viewing the project as a whole. This is not necessarily an uncritical position as it highlights the possible superficiality of both this concept and the idea of using art for the purposes of social change.

The big question is of course; is it possible and desirable to convert the temporary autonomous zone into a permanent one?

The Market Estate Project has come into being in the gap between the end of the estate as council housing and its re-construction as properties managed by a housing trust.

What are the implications of and for this temporary space and how will its use respond to the wider issues of art and communal activity? As the space has been radically emptied there is no ‘public’ for the artists to engage with other than themselves. When they arrive the artists will be an atomised bunch – selected by the curators for common thematic reasons and in some cases maybe known to each other but otherwise an unknown quantity.

How can (and should) this gap between structures that the project creates be maximised? The theory of the temporary autonomous zone could be a both a challenge and a critique, it opens up the possibility of action but because of its ultimately transitory nature it fails to follow through any programme of change. It can however highlight the underlying relationships between the different actors in this particular scenario.

These relationships quickly become politicised; in the structure of the project there is a nascent bureaucracy (a possible state) that is in place to mediate between the various artists and to protect them from the outside: Both from the official structures of authority, with whom it acts as guarantor, and from the menace of the previous illicit users of the estate…