Jonas Staal
The Scottish European Parliament, Studies, 2018

Jonas Staal‘s The Scottish-European Parliament is centred around a visual model that transforms a decommissioned oil rig in the North Sea into a new transnational parliament, assembling pan-European organisations with Scottish civil platforms, social movements and political parties to envision a future European Union from a Scottish point of view. Artistically, The Scottish-European Parliament is an imaginative, almost utopian, space that proposes the existence of a new European parliament. As Staal proposes “artistic imaginary precedes political change”, in order to reshape the European Union we must imagine this change first. Staal’s almost science-fiction logic results in a visual proposal that assembles a variety of scenarios proposed by different political and social organisations within the exhibition, through which the future can be experienced and practised prior to its arrival.

Excerpt from the introductory text of Jonas Stall’s exhibition “The Scottish-European Parliament”, CCA Glasgow, Oct. 23 – Nov. 25, 2018.