Nation Project

Kawika Kakugawa

Film 301

Professor Green

September 23, 2009

Blank Nation

The concept of a nation is abstract and difficult to understand. The traditional definition, of a nation, is a stable political and geographical entity that creates an imagined community. This community has a shared language, culture, ethnicity, and history. The interpretation of Santiago Sierra’s photography display of “Palabra Tapada” (Covered Word) challenges the concept of nation by taking away the definition, in which a nation identifies itself with. A nation’s definition fail, both political and geographical, for it doesn’t have a symbol to represent its definition, or the imagined community that it produced. This is shown by the artwork in the way it makes the covered word undefined.

In order to better understand how “Palabra Tapada” undermines the traditional definition of a nation the artwork must be described in further in detail. It is composed of four photos. The photos are all of Pavilions. Three of the pavilions have the name of Spain over them, but the fourth pavilion has the name Spain covered by black plastic and masking tape.

Covering up the sign on the fourth pavilion the artwork challenges the traditional definition of a nation by covering up the social fact of what the sign shows. “Social facts are when the imagination has become a collective” (Appadurai, 5). The collective understands the social fact that Spain is a nation. The artwork takes away the meaning to the word Spain. The artwork takes away the word and doing so takes away the sign of the ideology of what Spain represents.

This can be supported by the cultural systems that preceded the idea of the nation. One of these cultural systems was religion, which had worked primarily sacred language and script (Anderson, 13). Because these people could identify with other people of the same religion they could imagine people in there community that they never have met (Anderson, 18).

So by covering up the sign you cover up its sacred language. Taking away the linking force between people and imagined communities, for neither of them have a set of signs to identify similar ideologies. This means that they can’t imagine anyone outside the people they meet, because there is no title to give these imagined community members.

Covering up the sign also covers up its borders, because when the title of the demarked territory is taken, it becomes unmarked, which takes away the border marks that outlined the territory. “In modern conception, state sovereignty is fully, flatly, and evenly operative over each square centimeter of a legally demarked” (Anderson, 19).

Santiago Sierra’s “Palabra Tapada” successfully challenges the traditional definition of a nation. Covering up Spain’s name, which covers up the definition of what the word represents, imagined community, demarked territory, and a sacred language. Some key qualities that make up our traditional definition of a nation.

Works Cited

Anderson, Bennidict. “Cultural Roots.”

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. Revised Edition. London and New York: verso, 2006

Appadurai, Ajurn. Modernity at large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.1996. Public

Worlds Series. Eds. Dilip Gaonkar and Benjamin Lee. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.