CONTENTS OF VOLUME 3
Liberate the Flag!
In an age of web-blogs, broadband streaming and video file-sharing, only one media – and perhaps the most visual of them all – has escaped global democratisation. It’s time to liberate the flag!
By Kim Wyon
Flags were once the embellished emblems of kings, invading armies and nation-builders, evoking a sense of unity, loyalty and – following the birth of the French tricolour – the hope of modernity. That national emblems still command our raw emotions and ideological zeal was only all too apparent in the murky backwaters of Balkan nationalism in the 1990s, not to mention recent Islamist backlashes worldwide. Flag-burning and flag-waving – instantly flashed around the world as taunting acts of tribalism – almost beg the question: Are flags as a means of communication inherently divisive, flying the face of our advisories, or are they capable of lending themselves to the contemporary wardrobe of individualism and cross-cultural dialogue, offering a creative tool of self-expression? Can we really all have our own flag?
Pirates and Pragmatists
Setting national myths and legends aside, many would perhaps be astonished to learn of the pragmatic roots of many of our national flags.
Take for instance the English flag. Not the iconic red-white-and-blue Union Jack, which is the emblem of the United Kingdom, but the flag of the dragon-bating, princess-saving Saint George: a red cross on a white background. The flag is identical to the flag of the Italian city of Genoa, once a mighty seafaring nation in its own right. The Genoese city state infamously brokered a deal with Mediterranean pirates to allow ships under Genovese flag free passage for a settled annual fee. The English, being a practical people, were so impressed by this ingenious scheme of institutionalised extortion, which spared Genovese merchants from the messy business of random plundering, that they franchised the use of the Genovese flag, which from the 14th century onwards also became the English flag.
In a twist of events, Britain in the General Maritime Treaty of 1820 forced all states of the Arabian Gulf to add a white fringe to the traditional red ensigns of the region to better distinguish commercial ships from those of roaming pirates. The current flags of Bahrain, Dubai and Qatar still carry this feature.
Pragmatism has also made its mark on the 20th century Persian tricolour, created almost a century after Eugène Delacroix first unveiled his bare-bosomed, tricolour-wielding mademoiselle Liberty, the embodiment of The French Revolution. Following the Iranian Islamic revolution of the 1980s, the inherently secular Persian tricolour saw the addition of calligraphic boarders – angular Kufic writing – echoing the cry of the mufti: Allahu Akbar! Saddam Hussein added the exact same message, albeit in nervously scribbled handwriting, to the equally secular Iraqi flag – the pan-Arabian socialist tricolour – in his last-ditch attempt to garner public support in a testosterone-driven region increasingly shrouded in old-school religion.
Fanatics and fashion victims
Another of Delacroix’ billboard canvases is, perhaps, even more foreboding. In his ‘The Fanatics of Tangier’ the French romanticist depicts the ecstatic followers of the Muslim cleric Ben Issa as they carnival through downtown Tangier under a billowing Islamic banner – the mirror image of the green Islamic flags of today (such as the Day-Glo Hamas flag), which have come to symbolise the razor-edged vanguard of radical Islamism while, in stark contrast, the Danish flag – the colour opposite of the English flag, and also originally a crusader banner – has, on occasion of a handful of newspaper cartoons, joined the ranks of iconic hate-insignia alongside the Star Spangled Banner and the Star of David.
Nonetheless, to a modern audience, it is perhaps striking that the revolutionary undertow in Delacroix’ two fiery broadsheets are so emphatically similar.
Political appropriation is, of course, not the only exploitation of flags. Within the commercial realm, national flags have for decades been rehashed as lifestyle commodities. Few would perhaps today consider a Danish flag – with its Islamophobic connotations – as a fashion statement, but think of Napapijri’s pseudo outdoorwear with its slap-happy Norwegian flags, or Dolce & Gabbana underwear safely invested with the gelato sheen of the feel-good Italian tricolour. And naturally, the most iconic fashion statement of all: the American flag – a personal statement on free-wheeling liberty and rock’n’roll. Even Jasper John’s attempt at rendering it a little battle-weary ultimately backfired: it brought the artist fame and fortune, the American dream. No symbol is as collectively ‘individualist’ as the Stars and Stripes, hate it or love it.
Diversity and Inclusion
With the world on the move, with growing urban diversity and with an urgent need for cross-cultural dialogue, the flag may seem too divisive a media – more of a liability than an asset. Yet few other means of communication are so eye-catching and reach so deeply into our everyday lives. And after all, ‘inclusive’ rather than ‘divisive’ flags have flourished for decades.
Take the rainbow Peace Flag, which was relatively unknown outside Italy until the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The flag first appeared at the Perugia-Assisi Peace March as early as 1961 and is attributed to Italian peace activist Also Capitini. Yet the first designs were very free in interpretation and didn’t conform to the rainbow gamut. The addition of the word ‘Pace’ (i.e. Peace) in white lettering came as late as the 1980s, and currently around 20 different designs are available in Italy where the flag has almost become a street fixture, blending in with local football flags and the ever-present pegged laundry. International versions have swept the world in recent years as a rallying point for peace movements of every kind.
The Gay & Lesbian Rainbow Flag was originally created in 1978 by artist Gilbert Baker as a flag for the San Francisco gay and lesbian community. The main design difference between the Gay & Lesbian Rainbow Flag and the Peace Flag is that the gay flag has 6 colour bars rather than 7 and that the colour grades are inverted to show the warm colours at the top. In addition, a signature magenta – or pink – bar is often added at the bottom. In other versions the bottom bar is black.
Despite being a latecomer to the scene of rainbow flags, the Gay & Lesbian Rainbow Flag has become an almost universally recognised symbol of inclusiveness, and local versions have been developed worldwide. Most recently, a design for a Greek Gay and Lesbian Flag was suggested by the young Italian graphic designer Federico Panzano.
The European Union hosted a design competition in 2001 for a new flag to symbolise the unity of diversity, which is a core value of the organisation. The winning contribution, designed by none other than hotshot Dutch designer Rem Koolhass, was a bar-code like flag representing all the colours of member state flags. This multicoloured European flag was, however, never adopted but remains an open option.
Dynamism and open source
An attempt to create a dynamic World Flag was launched in 2004 by the author of this article, and the web-version is available at www.worldflag.net. The ever-changing, never-repeating flag is generated on the basis of elements of decorative art and street art from around the world.
The World Flag project with its dynamic rather than static approach to flags opened my eyes to the idea of adopting a more transitional and, above all, more personalised approach to flag design where flags are created to symbolise aspirations and sentiments of the moment.
In a sense, this dynamic approach to flag design shares the zeal for here-and-now immediacy that we see in many corporate identity programs with their short-lived trademarks and logos, yet it has no need for corporate uniformity as such. Anyone can make their own flag for any occasion and any purpose. Why not create a Saturday morning liberty flag for coffee-craving computer geeks? Or a wake-me-up birthday flag for sag-ass rap-artists? Why not? After all, like any other commodity, flags are disposable and can be developed as perfect makeshift mood boards. It’s here today and gone tomorrow, yet it enshrines the moment.
An example of a community-based approach to dynamic flag design, reaching beyond the mere individual approach, is an upcoming event in late 2007 where I and Iraqi artist Mahmoud Alibadi in association with elementary schools in the most ethnically diverse district in the Danish capital are to launch a competition among children in the neighbourhood to create a local district flag.
In the wake of the burning of Danish flags at protest rallies around the world in 2006, the Copenhagen Flag Project seeks to set out a level playing field where flags are used to express personal visions and community aspirations.
The intention is to view flags as vehicles of mutual dialogue rather than entrenched flag-waving division. And the winning flag – by open Internet-based ballot – will, for a time at least, be a shared hope.
The community-based project is but one of the projects I have launched that seek to rediscover the flag as a dynamic, open source media – to liberate the flag!
