The newspaper supplement PANORAMA was produced in the context of the exhibition INFORMATION/TRANSFORMATION at the centre for contemporary art Extra City in Antwerp, Belgium. It appeared on the 12th of October 2005 as an extra supplement to the Belgian financial daily newspaper DE TIJD.

Several days earlier, on October 8th in that same newspaper, an advertisement with the heading "How Brussels Hijacked Europe" announced the appearance of that supplement. This announcement turned out to be the omen for yet another hijacking: the editorial team of DE TIJD and its readers ascertained on the 12th of October that their trusted newspaper contained the extra PANORAMA supplement, unbeknownst to the editorial team. Its identical graphic design caused readers of this supplement to see it as part of their newspaper, including the degree of its journalistic credibility.

"Augustijnen likes to lead the viewer down the garden path by freely swinging between fiction and reality."

PANORAMA tells the story of how a handful of property developers created a myth in Brussels by building an International Congress Centre. As if by coincidence that International Congress Centre was founded very close to the branch of the European Parliament in Brussels. And it was given the stature of a gigantic parliamentary infrastructure which perfectly responded to the European Parliament's needs. Contrary to all European treaties and the governmental agreements between Luxembourg, France and Belgium, three fourth of the activities of the European Parliament were established within that infrastructure, and Brussels subsequently became the capital of Europe.

In PANORAMA an interview with Etienne Davignon - a political and economic front man in Belgian and European history - serves as the basis for the weaving of a meaningful network. Various texts which describe the genesis of the European Union and the topographical implantation of its institutions in Brussels are placed in relation to narratives from Belgium's colonial past.

PANORAMA consciously breaks a number of journalistic rules because it freely re-thinks and elaborates upon the journalistic conventions of an interview, a city map, literary texts, historical documents, and photographic or other evidence. The involuntary asylum for PANORAMA that DE TIJD gave, makes way for a game which leads from assimilation through transformation to parasiticism. Despite its apparent formal homogeneity this newspaper supplement reveals a hybrid character that does not claim a singular status. It resides somewhere between journalism, political sciences, history, documentary and art.

PANORAMA was distributed as a supplement to DE TIJD in 45.000 copies. 10.000 extra copies were printed for distribution via the Extra City arts centre. Beside the Dutch edition, PANORAMA appeared in French and English speaking editions (28.000 copies each), produced by the Luxembourg organisation ON25 as part of the ARTSTARS project. These editions were distributed in the European institutions in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg and at specific locations such as the Antoine Wiertz Museum, the Royal Museum for Middle Africa in Brussels and in public spaces in Paris.