Concept
NANOSTATE
Nanostate is a state with no fixed geography (a homeland), but with a location determined by time.
It is located in the areas defined by international time-zone conventions, and for the instant only that the time is noon and midnight in those time-zones (hence it is chronotopographical - its mapping is defined by timespace). At each hour the Nanostate encompasses a multitude of peoples and a multitude of languages in a north-south segment of the world from pole to pole. This segment consists of the opposing time-zone areas as mapped onto the globe (for example, +01 UTC and -11 UTC). Nanostate does not supercede existing states at these instants - rather it co-exists.
These chronotopographical characteristics of the Nanostate are particularly resonant with the Virtual Mine concept.
Nanostate is more broadly a means to think through issues of on-line / virtual politics - non-geographical nationality and identity. Its continuous manifestation is through the web, at http://www.nanostate.org/.
This mode of being has many consequences in terms of citizenship, nationhood, politics, economics, social structures etc. The core concerns of the Nanostate are currently stated in the Nanostate Protocol Volume 1 (http://www.nanostate.org/protvol1.htm).
THE ENERGY SECRETARIAT
Nanostate proposes to construct within one of the containers a SECRETARIAT for the redistribution of the ENERGY that it repeatedly encompasses in its revolution of the globe - energy which can be considered both in terms of geological resource and industrial or human capacity. This energy is by convention under the command of nation states and / or corporations. Nanostate claims a periodic co-jurisdiction over this resource, according to its principle of existence, as outlined above. Since Nanostate has no accumulative capacity, it must redistribute the energy in question.
The installation will utilise sound, video and electronics to represent this periodic redistribution.
The sound and video will be compiled and forwarded to the organisers for installation according to a supplied plan. The electronics will be pre-fabricated and also forwarded to the organisers, and will consist of timers and arrangements of lights, triggered at hourly intervals. In the intervening period the video will show a loop lasting one hour, which displays the arrival of the Nanostate within each time zone, and the consequent indicators of its presence and co-existence with the extant structures and states. The audio will indicate the passage of time, and organises this spatially into a ring of twenty-four speakers (in 12 stereo pairs). It will culminate in a burst of sound-energy at hourly intervals.
The final component of the installation will be a direct link from a computer to a shockwave application on the Nanostate website. This will represent the activity of the Nanostate Energy Secretariat.
Projects by Nanostate include:
Mobile Embassy of the Nanostate, 71:40, Milch, London 1997
Nanobake, Articultural Fair, South Bank Centre, London 1999
Nanostate Reading Room, Golders Green Club, London 1999
Five-Language Reading Event, live-stock ram fm, 2000 (http://www.live-stock.org) (a Northern Arts commission)
Nanostate has received funding from the Arts Council of England (National Lottery Fund) (a form of state-to-state aid?)
