Michael Schindhelm, Lavapolis, Trans. by David Strauss, Sternberg Press, 2014
https://michaelschindhelm.com/
“I am not sedentary and I am not itinerant. My home is a heterotopia with a thousand imaginary landscapes. … The island is the buffer zone between the places of the outside world. Those that exclude one another outside meet here. Those that are at war with one another outside negotiate here. Those that steal from one another outside trade here.”—Simone, 38, resident of the island for three years
Seventy years ago, the small island nation of Lavapolis was founded. It began as an alternative, a gambling destination to rival Las Vegas, and became a model for a new way of living. With its principle of universal solidarity, the nation counters the pitfalls of contemporary global society. It is an ever-shifting utopia; a volcano jutting out of the Mediterranean Sea; an extension of the open frontier. The biographies of its inhabitants are integral to the whole. If the world backs down from the challenges of Lavapolis, the island is destined to erupt.
The book LAVAPOLIS by Michael Schindhelm takes a look at an island which does not (yet) exist, and reports on an experimental exchange of ideas related to the question: What is actually possible? Both the internet platform lavapolis.com and the series of performances under the title FRIDAY IN VENICE are based on this story about the fictional island Lavapolis.
Solution 262: Lavapolis is the tenth volume in the Solution series edited by Ingo Niermann. The speculative novel accompanies “Friday in Venice,” a transmedia storytelling project about a possible Europe that took place at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, August 1–17, 2014 (www.lavapolis.com).
