The Violence of Participation

Contributions by Shumon Basar, Ute Meta Bauer, Celine Condorelli, Erhard Eppler, Nikolaus Hirsch, Rem Koolhaas, Stéphanie Moisdon, Ingo Niermann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ralf Pflugfelder, Karl Schlögel, Eyal Weizman, Tirdad Zolghadr, et al.

The future of the State depends, at least in Europe, on the realization that the State of the 20th Century (the National State embodying internal and external sovereignty) does no longer have any future.
– Erhard Eppler, Auslaufmodell Staat? (2005)

Is Europe a place, a space, or a temporary community of shared interests? As a political space, Europe is as conflictual as its debated constitution. It is a construct that must be continuously negotiated, and its longing for an architecture of strategic encounters parallels an increasing economical power of the private sector, while the sovereignty of European nation states attenuate.

This book, edited by London-based architect and author Markus Miessen, marks an extension of the discursive space he has produced as contribution to the 2007 Lyon Biennial. He has pulled together a heterogeneous group of interlocutors to lead conversations on alternative notions of participation, the inconsistence between democratic concepts, and what it means to live in Europe today.