Turkish artist Halil Altindere continues to be against the grain with a mixture of humour and pointed commentary to Turkish and world affairs. http://www.penccil.com/gallery.php?p=116160140922
In June 2015, the similarity between photos of stranded migrants and Kader Attia's installation 'Ghost' from 2007 foretold a refugee wave and crisis of a scale the world did not see before. http://www.penccil.com/gallery.php?p=703352392501
The borders of Europe, open to each other until summer 2015, sadly closed one by one as a response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Borders are managed by politicians. What borders could do if looked at by architects can be seen in this project of architect Werner Tscholl. He exemplifies bringing cultures together with the Timmelsjoch Experience Pass Museum, presenting the history of the region and its communities between Austria and Italy.
http://www.penccil.com/gallery.php?p=142028460708
Paris symbolizes the very best qualities of Europe in it's cafes, concert halls and independent publishers, and in 2015, it was assaulted for all of these qualities on 7 January and 13 November. We chose this project by Julien Berthier not as an answer, but as a silent testament for the intrinsic Parisian qualities of irony, criticism and built-in hope: "All the services found in a city corner are assembled in a unique object (bus-stop, streetlight, surveillance camera, kakemono, clock, loud speaker, solar panel, traffic lights, street number, garden, direction panels, street names plates, bird house, taxi post, garbage, parking ticket machine, mailbox, bicycle parking, city map and public bench). This ... is both a proposal (to simplify the urban landscape) and its critique (the aesthetic monopoly of urban furniture and the rationalization of public spaces)."
http://www.penccil.com/gallery.php?p=636632959441
In our opinion, Banksy's 'Dismaland' was the best show of the year - critical, spectacular, improvised and surprising.
http://www.penccil.com/gallery.php?p=11447018561