[translocal, yes! this is an amazing example of something going on here in switzerland that re-invests public spaces with private cultural-political meanings, and i found it incredibly interesting, this monumentalising of text in the form of political sculpture/advertising beacon… below reprinted from Felix Stalder and the Newborn — Undeliverable? project]

A truck is circulating through Zürich. Seven extra-large letters stand on its open holding area. They form the word NEWBORN. At different locations, the trucks pulls up. A rapper, EKI NOX, performs. But the truck has to leave again after a very short time. Will its cargo remain undeliverable?

This intervention examines how multiple, translocal networks constitute themselves in the common local space of Zürich and how they develop specific forms of visibility and invisibility within the public space. The truck with the NEWBORN sign serves as focal point triggering responses which will render these presences visible to all.

The original meaning of the NEWBORN sign will be evident primarily to migrants from the Balkans. Many of them were either present in person, or via the media, when an almost identical sculpture was unveiled at the Mother Theresa Square in Pristina when the independence of the Kosovo was declared (02.17.2008). For the Kosovo-Albanians, that sculpture symbolizes a new phase of their self-constitution. Not just in the Kosovo, but also in Zürich. Since the establishment of the state, the Kosovo-Albanian community in Switzerland is beginning to (re)present itself in the public sphere on their own terms. Kosovo-Albanians will also understand the rapper whose lyrics are partly in Albanian and how he interprets the NEWBORN sign from his individual perspective.

The issue of a ‘new beginning’ is also present in the Swiss political public, not the least through recurring debates over and votes on the conditions under which foreigners can become Swiss citizens. At the same time, a discourse on ‘shifting identities’ seems to offer — if not a new beginning — then at least an alternative conception of ‘post-national’ political identity.

The third layer which circulation of the NEWBORN through the city of Zürich investigates in the capturing of the public space through commercial actors and their interest. The EURO2008, which starts while the intervention is taking place, pushes this development to new dimensions. Across the city highly controlled areas of intensive advertisement (fan zones) are being erected. For those who do not behave according to protocol special temporary detention facilities are being erected so that they can be removed swiftly from the public space. The degree to which the public and imaginary space as already been captured by commercialism will lead most people who see the NEWBORN circulating through the streets to interpret it as just another advertisement signage to be set up somewhere in the city.

The Project NEWBORN — Undeliverable? conducts research into the constitution and interaction of multiple, parallel publics within the local space of Zurich shaped by the dynamics of translocal migration, national identity and globalized commercialism. Such a research endeavor needs to take place in the public space itself. Only by intervening directly the latent, often invisible dynamics can be brought to the surface. Activating existing and triggering new dynamics is an essential
part of the approach. The interventions are being documented and material
will be made available online and offline.

NEWBORN — Undeliverable? will take place June 5-7 in Zürich. The precise locations of the interventions will not be announced in advance. Stay tuned.