Newborn at Newborn Kosova

NEWBORN Monument

Author: Ogilvy Kosova
Ilaz Agushi 4
10000 Prishtinë
Kosovë

THE TASK
Only 10 days before the actual day, we came up with the idea to prepare a celebration event for the biggest day in the country’s history - The Declaration of Independence.

The challenge was to avoid any instance that would uproar the crowd and yet provide a joyful manifestation that would mark this historical day.

SOLUTION
We created the giant sculpture “NEWBORN”.
3m high-24m long-1m thick, weighing 9 tonnes, with a surface of 192 m2.
We chose the word “NEWBORN” to encapsulate everything that the independence was going to bring to the country, in one word, intentionally in English, to globally pass on the message of a newest country being born.
We then turned this word into an interactive sculpture, to mark this event with a symbol that would be part of this day and the people that gathered around it. This would be used as a tool for the people to express all their emotions via black permanent markers, which we provided during the event. This lasted throughout Feb 17 2008, until the 24-hour mark.

THE RESULT
Over 150,000 people wrote on it, starting with the President and the Prime Minister. Those meaningful signatures became art. The media coverage spanned throughout the world.
Hundreds of thousands of people witnessed it, millions saw it on TV. CNN and other major networks covered it live.
The sculpture also made it to the front page of the New York Times, and was mentioned in other newspapers such as The International Herald Tribune, The Observer, Sydney Herald, etc., while the BBC, Spiegel Online, and others featured it on their websites. As a result, the media worldwide refers to Kosova as the “newborn” country.

The sculpture has become the most famous monument in the country and is now protected by the government to preserve the signatures on it.