Monday, October 30, 2006


The European Union defines European identity as something that is provided only within the Union and only to European Union citizens, although Europe does not end at the borders of the Union. However, the EU does have the power to define identity, the power to set up the rules of a game others have to join. The consumer society of the European Union has created a rule, that ’everything is for sale’, including even notions of identity.


Through a vision of the modern world the game of Monopoly - a game not chosen by chance, because MONOPOLY means having power over something or someone – has been transformed into a Kafkaesque world of complex rules/laws of the ’game’, which today's European Union offers to all ’players’ as the only possibility, the only reality.

Europoly structure
The conceptual structure of the work is articulated through 22 selected professions of varying value and prestige, as well as a whole series of accompanying symbols (Yugo and designer bags, profession cards, chance cards, Eu community chest cards). The work deals with problems of identity, power, the process of integration, and questions the rigid, categorical, merciless, and sometimes even grotesque, qualities of a system of rule which mainly functions through pure statistics - numbers, calculations, value relations, thereby reducing the value of the individual as such. An integral part of the portable Europoly game will be a booklet including texts by philosophers, sociologists, curators, art critics, historians and economists, as well as artists whose areas of research are pertinent to the issues raised by Europoly. Their contributions will play an essential role in interrogating the multiple layers of the work itself as well as extending the dialogue regarding and beyond European identity.

Europoly-Web site
In order to keep the circle open and to offer the people a platform of dialogue and exchange, a forum on the Europoly web page is created. Here people are invited to send their personal histories, comments and hopes concerning European or not yet European citizens’ lives. Both a network of human solidarity and a practical tool concerning EU bureaucracy are possible development of the forum. Europoly-Web site also serves as an advertisement for the product, where one can learn more about and even purchase it.

Europoly-UNIDEE scholarship grant
Dejan Kaludjerovic has been resident at UNIDEE in Residence International program 2005, where Europoly, project conceived by him in 2004, got the chance to be further developed and structured as a portable game.
As coherence to the aim of the project itself, came out the idea of establishing a Europoly-UNIDEE grant for providing the opportunity to an other non European artist to get the same chance to attend the Unidee Residency Program in Cittadellarte. The funds for the grant will be gathered through the selling of the portable game and funds provided by institutions ~ [1] 2