Imag(en)ing

Jokes that start with "A Catholic priest, an imam and a rabbi`’ tend to make me laugh rather than frown at their incorrectness. Blonde jokes, brunette jokes, stereotype jokes make me chuckle. I chuckled for hours at a photo that showed a baby given a pacifier with thorns on it and could not at all understand when my sister was furious. Prime ministers drawn as cats that got tangled in wool or voodoo dolls of presidents all seem to me to be jokes, rather than a case of persecution.

This is why, when I saw Entropa by David Cerny, I thought it fun... and funny.

The giant work Entropa which now stands in the entry of the European Union Council, Justus Lipsus, is an artwork by a very controversial Czech artist, who framed various representations of each member state as components of a giant multimedia model kit.

Ah, but what a representation!

Bulgaria is depicted as several Turkish style squat toilets tied together with blue and red pipes, Germany is criss-crossed by a series of autobahns that resemble a swastika; Spain is a giant construction site as a dig at its building boom (I was not able to understand the small bomb thing); and Luxembourg is a gold covered nugget with "For Sale" sign. Belgium is a box of pretty but diverse looking chocolates and Sweden is an IKEA kit.

Netherlands is under tough waters with only its minarets sticking out, Denmark is a set of Lego with the offensive image of Mohammed in a dig to the cartoon crisis. See the images at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7827762.stm

The sole problem with the installation, which was put there by the Czechs to celebrate its first-ever presidency of the EU, is not the images. Mr Cerny, it seems, promised that the work would be carried out by 27 European artists, but has chosen instead to do the whole thing himself with two friends and create fictitious artists. This is why the desperate search for the Bulgarian artist, doggedly carried out by my Bulgarian journalist colleagues, produced no results.

He knew that this fraud would be uncovered sooner or later but he wanted to know whether Europeans had a sense of humour.

Unfortunately for him, institutions cannot be expected to share my sense of crude humour. Thus, Bulgaria fervently protested the work and requested it to be taken down both to the Czech Presidency and to Mr Solana, the secretary-general of the European Council.

A spokeswoman for Bulgaria's permanent representation to the EU, said in comments reported by EUObserver.com: "It [the work] is preposterous, a disgrace. It is a humiliation for the Bulgarian nation and an offence to [our] national dignity."

I asked a friend, with a good experience of public diplomacy, whether it was common practice or even wise to protest artwork.

"Not the artwork’` said the friend. ’’You do not see officials going around in biennales and launching protests. Yet, if there is an official body involved in the commissioning or displaying the artwork that a nation finds offensive, then the diplomacy may indeed address itself to that authority."

In 2001, when French nongovernmental organization Reporters Sans Frontieres opened an exhibition that showed a map where the pictures of what the group called "enemies of the press,’’ with Turkish Chief of Staff General Kivrikoglu among them, Turkey formally protested France. While Ankara recognized that this was the work of an NGO, it was a public authority that allowed the exhibition that displayed the faces of the press enemies on the floor of St Lazare train station in Paris.

Next week, when Turkey’s prime minister visits Brussels perhaps he can give a few examples on how he and some members of his party dealt with humor and provocative (even non-provocative) art.

Remember the statue of ballerinas that were removed because they were found provocative, or nudes covered by cloth in the exhibition of an AKP municipality and rumours that the great nudes that used to be in the Ankara Art Museum, now opened after renovation, are kept in storage?