Vincent Straub. The last chair: Documenting Europe 1, 2016

How can we strengthen democracy and citizen engagement? How can we better identify the needs, concerns, and ideas of citizens regarding democratic governance and their place in it?

These questions are at the heart of the Jubel European Democracy Festival and the installation, The last chair: Documenting Europe, exhibited as part of the festival and installed on the festival grounds.

The Last chair: Documenting Europe was installed in the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels in September 2019 as part of the Jubel European Democracy Festival

The exhibition invited visitors to take part in a constructive visual exchange centred around an imagined narrative in which Europe and the European Union are on the verge of collapse.

The 12 images which form the exhibit act as the beginning of this archival process.

Vincent Straub. The last chair: Documenting Europe 2, 2016

The images consists of a photograph of a particular object, thing, or place taken in various places around Europe, from small villages to major cities. Each image is further overlaid with a political statement made by an elected far-right politician in the run-up to the 2019 European Union elections, highlighting how everyday objects and scenes are increasingly instrumentalized in the service of fatalist nationalist and populist agendas, forcing us to ask how we can retaliate against such narratives and spread a shared identity of unity, diversity, and democracy.

Vincent Straub. The last chair: Documenting Europe 3, 2016

As part of the exhibition, viewers were invited to submit their own photographs to help create an online archive of images that captures the shared feelings citizens have for Europe allowing for the discovery of a shared visual language.

Vincent Straub. The last chair: Documenting Europe 4, 2016

In this envisaged scenario, it is the task of citizens to document the objects, things, places, and people they most associate with Europe before it vanishes. The full exhibition text can be found here.

Vincent Straub. The last chair: Documenting Europe 5-12, 2016