A Small Piece of Peace: German Artist Creates One-Meter Utopia in Europe

German conceptual artist Peter Kees told Sputnik about Arcadia, his project to create small spaces of peace and harmony in a world where they are missing.

In 2006 German conceptual artist Peter Kees founded the first Embassy of Arcadia, on one square meter of land at the Havana Biennal. Over the past decade, he has spread Arcadia across Europe, and opened embassies in Berlin, Rostock and Naples, among other places.

In an interview with Sputnik France, the artist said the idea for Arcadia originated in antiquity, and was depicted by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. The name refers to a peaceful civilization which lives in harmony with nature.

"I was thinking about whether there is a place for Arcadia today, in our world. There is no place in our world for something like Arcadia," Kees said.

"So, I decided to put only one square meter in different places, and so you have a little piece of Arcadia in the Netherlands, a little piece in Italy, in Finland, in the Czech Republic, Germany, all over Europe," explained the artist.

He said the work is aimed at provoking people into thinking about the happiness and harmony in a world full of conflict. He also intends the work to have a political dimension, since he believes the time of the nation state has ended.

"A person does not choose when or where they will come in this world, so they should have the right to go to the correct place that suits them. So, nationalities and national states are gone," he said.

Kees himself is the ambassador of Arcadia in Berlin, and said that anybody can visit Arcadia, if they can answer the questions he devised for the application form.

"I thought about Arcadia, and how to live in this world, so I thought up these questions and if you can answer them, you get a visa for Arcadia."