Esther Kokmeijer

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/// Contribution for the book “A summary of the world” – Esther Kokmeijer (English) ///

THE CENTRE OF EUROPE
Gintaras Karosas (1968)

In 1986 I found out from the post-war geography textbook that the centre of Europe was located near Vilnius. Then, an idea came to me to give a sense to the symbolic centre of Europe in a universal art language that would be understandable to everyone. I started searching for the place around Vilnius which would first and foremost have a good aura. Secondly, I was looking for the place which would have no urban objects in the background and where the dominance of nature would be felt. A year later, I found such a place. It was a small cosy meadow surrounded by the Siberian forest where countless trees lay fallen on each other. There was no electricity, let alone a telephone. I started by asking the local institution that administered the forests for permission to create a park, clear the forest and erect sculptures. They said at first that there was no need to create a park since a lot of parks had been created already.

Then, Lithuania was living its last years of the Soviet era and the later history of Europos Parkas reflects the history of the restored new state. Everything was made out of from scratch, springing from the very idea and intention to create an open-air museum of modern art. A few years later the French National Geographical Institute measured that the centre of Europe was quite near the place where I had established Europos Parkas. At that time, nobody in Lithuania believed that we lived in the centre of Europe. They said it was a fiction. The artists were the first to believe it. When organizing international symposiums and other events, communicating with the mass media, we succeeded in changing people’s mind slightly. Now everyone in Lithuania is sure that we are in the centre of Europe. And the reason this happened was not a one-day action or merely a mark but phenomenon that the centre of Europe became.

When Europos Parkas became widely known the authorities decided to mark the centre too. At a seven-kilometre distance from Europos Parkas they built a column with the stars and laid the road. And then it transpired they had built it on the wrong location. French geographers estimated that the centre of Europe was quite near Europos Parkas on one side while a famous Lithuanian geographer held the opinion that the centre was near Europos Parkas on the other side. If we draw a straight line between the central points estimated by French and Lithuanian geographers, Europos Parkas is situated in the middle of it. Thus it is quite plausible that the geographical centre is in Europos Parkas. I actually believe this to be true; I was sure about that from the very beginning.

One fine winter day, together with the Dutch Esther Kokmeijer and her friend we went to the centre established by the French. The trip itself was made memorable due to the narrow and difficult roads of the Vilnius District. The purpose of the trip surpassed all expectations as the unmarked centre of Europe is located in a very interesting place on the small hill and the whole habitat of the centre is framed by the forest. As the degree scale in the GPS receiver went down and the searchable coordinates were approached an extraordinary feeling took hold of us. Having found the point we were looking for, we all went round the whole area of the unmarked centre along the forest, thus marking it by leaving our footprints in the snow.