De Facto recommends

The exhibition ‘Mir is Mirë’ (‘mir’ meaning peace in Serbian; ‘mirë’ meaning good in Albanian) opened in Serbia and Kosovo last week. Young artists from Serbia and Kosovo showcase their work on the themes of conflict and peace, wartime trauma, national identity and cultural resilience. The event encourages visitors to look beyond nationalist biases and political division. It takes place in the wake of the Serbian-Kosovar ‘Mirëdita, Dobar Dan!’ cultural festival, which was abruptly cancelled by the Serbian authorities last June.

It has been more than 30 years since fighting broke out between Georgia and Abkhazia. Some of those whom the conflict displaced found refuge in a former Georgian sanatorium: the Hotel Metalurg. Now, they’re under pressure to leave again. Watch the documentary here.

400 years after The Netherlands colonized parts of Taiwan, the International Performance Festival Feeling Curious? invites Stefan Kaegi to turn the theatre into an embassy. September 28 & 29 in Rotterdam, NL.

raising flags is an ongoing project by museum in progress that has been realized at various locations since 2023, including virtual exhibition spaces online and media spaces in newspapers and magazines. Numerous artists participated and made flags, commenting on questions of social coexistence in challenging times.

The war against Ukraine did not start in February 2022, but in the spring of 2014. And the root of the invasions goes back in time even more, as they were a delayed response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and earlier territorial claims. The online exhibition Borderlands - Ukraine in Historical Maps - with numerous maps and short commentaries, aims to shed some light on the historical backgrounds of the present war of Russia against Ukraine. It was curated by historian Harrie Teunissen and map curator Martijn Storms.

On Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 April you can visit the Waag in Amsterdam to see a selection of artist Jan Rothuizen’s drawings, which are best described as written maps or graphic reports. You can also put yourself ‘on the map’, and join in for collective map of the city centre with all its visitors.

Over the past decade, our increasing and often conflicting claims on space have made disputes more intense and more urgent, widening the gap between the haves and de have-nots. This weekend, the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (NL) highlights the theme of Contested Space.

Since 2012 German artist Valeska Peschke has been developing the long-term project ‘Amikejo’ (place of friendship in Esperanto). Under this name, Neutral Moresnet was proclaimed as an Esperanto republic in 1907. Valeska Peschke took up this fleeting utopia as a vision for Europe.

At the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) the international group show Statecraft is still on show till October 30. The exhibition explores the underlying mechanisms at work in the engineering of the nation-state and the challenges it faces in today’s globalized, networked world. Curated by Katerina Gregos.

After a five-day journey across the ocean, this week, a small delegation of Chagos Islanders made an emotional return to their homeland. They were there to symbolically lay claim to the islands for Mauritius, in hopes of eventually resettling there.

What do you need to start your own country? Citizens, a flag, a national anthem? British comedian Danny Wallace tried to find out, and started his own micronation in his flat in London. His series was aired at the BBC in 2005.

Roman Mars is obsessed with flags—and after you watch this talk, you might be, too. These ubiquitous symbols of civic pride are often designed, well, pretty terribly. But they don’t have to be. In this surprising and hilarious talk about vexillology —the study of flags—Mars reveals the five basic principles of flag design and shows why he believes they can be applied to just about anything.