Micronations: The «State as a Work of Art»

Abstract

This paper investigates the phenomenon of micronations: the term describes comprehensively a diverse constellation of entities that mimic (in whole or in part) the features of a sovereign nation – land, people and government – although lacking any recognition by the international community. Spurred in the nineteenth century by the debate on the nation-state, the phenomenon expands intensely during the Sixties and Seventies, reflecting the libertarian ideals of the time. Between twentieth and twenty-first century, the spread of the world wide web provoked an explosion of micronations in the virtual space. Utopia, fiction, entertainment, eccentricity, fraud and art come together in the atlas of micronations. The artistic side is at the core of this essay, which examines the states founded as an art project, reinterpreting the notion of «the State as a Work of Art» coined by Jacob Burckhardt. This idea will be outlined according to the historical development: from the roots in the avant-garde (the Free and Independent Republic of Washington Square by Marcel Duchamp, 1917) to its conceptual interpretations (Robert Fillou’s République Géniale, 1971 and Nutopia by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, 1973) until the most recent episodes, such as NSK State (1992) and AVL-Ville by Atelier Van Lieshout (2001).