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The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today
... Benjamin (1975) apresenta uma crítica sobre a arte no processo de reprodutibilidade, enquanto que Bueno (2010), Viana (2009) e Gonçalves (2009) atualizam a discussão da arte contemporânea. De forma específica, neste artigo, os conceitos que melhor se adaptam à manifestação da arte na rua são os de "arte pública" (KWON, 1997), "contramonumento" (YOUNG, 1992(YOUNG, , 2001, que apresentam a arte pública e a relação com monumentos e contramonumentos, em uma perspectiva, que se aproxima desta pesquisa. Entretanto, o que vem ser a manifestação da arte contemporânea quando se pensa em sua manifestação nas ruas? ...
... Em 1992, ele utilizou o termo contramonumento em referências aos trabalhos sobre o holocausto na Alemanha, possibilitando as pessoas irem além do simples resgate da memória, mas provocando uma reflexão em sua articulação e interação com o espaço e a memória. Young (1992Young ( , 2001 considera que o Estado, ao produzir monumentos, pensa estrategicamente em criar vultos, dar importância a aspectos políticos e tendenciosos na ocupação; em contrapartida, os artistas buscam desenvolver obras que possibilitam discussão e reflexão sobre o que possa ter acontecido. Young (1992Young ( , 2001) referencia os artistas que vão além da criação de obras meramente simbólicas e que fogem à rigidez e grandiosidade propostas para monumentos, mas que pensam em suas obras como algo que vai além de apenas um elemento na paisagem. ...
... Young (1992Young ( , 2001 considera que o Estado, ao produzir monumentos, pensa estrategicamente em criar vultos, dar importância a aspectos políticos e tendenciosos na ocupação; em contrapartida, os artistas buscam desenvolver obras que possibilitam discussão e reflexão sobre o que possa ter acontecido. Young (1992Young ( , 2001) referencia os artistas que vão além da criação de obras meramente simbólicas e que fogem à rigidez e grandiosidade propostas para monumentos, mas que pensam em suas obras como algo que vai além de apenas um elemento na paisagem. Tais artistas buscam uma interação com o tempo, o espaço e a memória, sendo estes últimos considerados, para ele, como uma forma de contramonumento. ...
Resumo A manifestação da obra de arte nos espaços preestabelecidos e de certa forma privados como museus e galerias indicam temáticas e público-alvo definido por uma territorialidade. Porém, o que ocorre com a manifestação da arte nas ruas? Como se estabelece a questão de territorialidade? Seria uma forma de multiterritorialidade? Como se configuraria a multiterritorialidade da manifestação da arte nas ruas do Centro da cidade de Ipatinga no Estado de Minas Gerais? Em busca de uma possível resposta se trata o objetivo do presente artigo, que é identificar a multiterritorialidade da manifestação da arte nas ruas do centro de Ipatinga, principalmente na Praça da Bíblia. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, cujo método foi observacional, não participante, realizada no período de 2016-2017. Como instrumental teórico para análise qualitativa se utilizou a pentade burkeana. A bibliografia utilizada apresenta breves conceitos interdisciplinares, que tangem sobre arte, monumento, contramonumento, território, multiterritorialidade e o processo de formação territorial como um todo. A contextualização do território em que ocorre a manifestação permitiu que se identificasse a multiterritorialidade, que ocorre no processo de adaptação da manifestação da arte nas ruas e da apropriação deste território pelas manifestações da arte pública de forma cumulativa de diversas territorialidades. Palavras-chave: Multiterritorialidade. Manifestação. Arte e Rua Abstract The art manifestation in the pre-established and somewhat private spaces such as museums and galleries indicate thematic and public target defined by a territoriality. But what happens with the art manifestation on the streets? How is the question of territoriality established? Is it a form of multiterritoriality? How would the multiterritoriality of the art manifestation be configured on the streets of Ipatinga's downtown area in the State of Minas Gerais? In search of a possible answer, the purpose of this article is to identify the multiterritoriality of the art manifestation in the streets of the downtown area of Ipatinga city, especially in Praça da Biblia. It is a qualitative research whose method was observational, non-participant, carried out in the period 2016-2017. As a theoretical instrument for qualitative analysis, the Burkean pentade was used. The bibliography used presents brief interdisciplinary concepts that deal with art, monument, countermument, territory, multiterritoriality and the territorial formation process as a whole. The territory contextualisation in which the manifestation occurs allowed the multiterritoriality identification that occurs in the adaptation process of the art manifestation in the streets and the appropriation of this territory by the manifestations of public art in a cumulative form of diverse territorialities.
... Others might want to remember what we have been told should be forgotten. Some might choose to remember and learn from traumatic episodes, such as the Holocaust and wars (Hirsch, 2008(Hirsch, , 2012Huyssen, 1996Huyssen, , 2000Huyssen, , 2003Landsberg, 2004;Young, 1992). Such 'alternative' forms of remembering also materialise in monuments, memorials, and places of memory. ...
... Debates on 'alternative' forms of memorialisation have gained momentum in the last decades (Huyssen, 1996(Huyssen, , 2000Mitchell, 2003;Young, 1992). Here, the creation of counter-monuments and anti-monuments as sites of different forms of remembering, or opposing what is remembered or disremembered, has become crucial. ...
... Counter-monuments are typically defined as a type of memorial that challenges traditional ideas of commemoration and monumentality (Young, 1992). Unlike 'conventional' monuments, which are often permanent and designed to honour historical figures, events, or values, counter-monuments question, oppose, or subvert these forms of remembrance (Mitchell, 2003;Stevens et al., 2012). ...
... Se considera aquí la memoria social como un artificio en construcción que permite dialogar con distintos saberes y generar una identidad propia desde la multiplicidad en la experiencia acumulada. Para Pierre Nora la memoria social es lo que hacen con el pasado nuestras sociedades condenadas al olvido (1984); Joël Candau (2011), en diálogo con James Young (1992) y Étienne François, definió a la memoria social como el conjunto de recuerdos reconocidos por un determinado grupo y a la memoria colectiva como el conjunto de recuerdos comunes a un grupo (31); existen aquí varias contradicciones por la primacía en el abordaje teórico descuidando el flanco del aspecto social. Las memorias se construyen desde la realidad individual que, en colectivos relegados y acceso reducido a la distribución de recursos, están atravesados de forma particular. ...
... Por su parte, Young (1992) propone los "contramonumentos", entendidos como espacios conmemorativos descarados y dolorosamente autoconscientes, pensados para desafiar las propias premisas de su existencia, al punto de convertir al público en la escultura a partir de examinarse a sí mismo, en oposición a la pretendida eternidad de los monumentos tradicionales, "invitan a su propia violación y profanación" (277). Los contramonumentos buscan provocar, exigen interacción, no quieren ser ignorados. ...
El presente artículo promueve la discusión en torno a patrimonializar el parque El Ejido de Quito por las memorias de resistencia que allí se construyen y están por construirse, a partir de la necesidad que pueda evidenciar este tipo de ejercicios críticos. En un debate con los autores clásicos de los estudios de la memoria para abrir esta discusión inacabada se evidencian consensos y disensos con su pensamiento. A través de una investigación cualitativa documental como parte del recorrido de los textos que constituyen la bibliografía de posgraduación en Memoria Social y Patrimonio Cultural de la UFPel en Brasil. Se concluye en abierto, que tanto las memorias de resistencia tienen que ser constituidas, su concepto trabajado y pensar en corto plazo en promover la patrimonialización de la inmaterialidad que las identidades de resistencia van generando.
... For Young, countermonuments reject and renegotiate "the traditional forms and reasons for public memorial art". [1] Counter-monuments typically challenge traditional concepts of commemoration and monumentality. Unlike "conventional" monuments, which are usually permanent and honour historical figures, events or values, counter-monuments seek to question, oppose or subvert these traditional forms of remembrance. ...
... Tällaiset epäsovinnaiset tavat kunnioittaa jonkin tapahtuman tai ilmiön muistoa ovat saaneet viime vuosikymmeninä yhä enemmän akateemista huomiota; esimerkiksi James Young, Andreas Huyssen ja Marianne Hirsch ovat kirjoittaneet juutalaisten joukkotuhon muistamisesta aina 1980-luvulta lähtien. James Youngin sanoin vastamonumentit torjuvat ja määrittävät uudelleen "julkisen muistomerkkitaiteen perinteisiä muotoja ja perusteluita" [1]. ...
The rise of protest, activism and alternative memorials challenge urban planners to adopt more flexible approaches to the urban landscape.
... Tradicionalmente, los procesos de monumentalización encarados por los Estados naciones, como es el caso de los constructores del monumento inaugural, están vinculados con su origen y los mártires sacrificados para su existencia. Buscan fijar historias ennoblecedoras de la nación que quieren honrar a los que ofrendaron sus vidas para que el país pueda vivir: historia sobre la barbarie (Young 1992). ...
... Allí parecen actualmente coexistir discursos y materialidades antagónicas -descartadas acciones iconoclastas-sin problemas aparentes. De acuerdo con las características desarrolladas por Young (1992), no han se han erigido allí antimonumentos ni contramonumentos: las formas y estilos monumentales elegidos por los colectivos indigenistas parecen seguir a las tradicionales y ocupar un lugar junto a ellas. Son de índole contemplativa. ...
This article explores the commemorative monumentality of the Battle of San Carlos, focusing on material evidence, documentary sources, and oral memory spanning nearly a century of monumental landscape (1935-2024) at the site of Los Cuatro Vientos (Bolívar, Buenos Aires, Argentina). By examining these landscapes as activators of memory, this study sheds light on their role in shaping and perpetuating hegemonic discourses that overlap, persist, and conflict over time, as well as the social actors involved. The objective is to understand the monument’s place within dominant narratives and the sociohistorical context of each period as part of its social history. Archaeology, as a science of traces, reveals not only the phases or stages of monumentality but also attempts at erasure, damage, or decay due to time and environmental factors, uncovering multiple layers of meaning that can be excavated both literally and metaphorically. Far from being a static landscape, the site is continually redefined through new meanings, social actors, commemorative practices, and performative actions. In contemporary times, conflicting discourses and materialities coexist within the landscape. Like all representations of the past, the monument selectively relates to historical events, contributing to both remembrance and oblivion, including and excluding, exalting and concealing, amplifying certain voices while silencing others. Initially, this monument was intended to symbolize the triumph of civilization over the so-called barbarism of the desert, casting the indigenous population as the defeated, relegated to invisibility through their forced incorporation into the Argentine nation-state. However, the memory of the defeated persists, latent within the city and embedded in the landscape’s folds.
... From a performative perspective, although users can be both actors and spectators in this event-space, users co-author the text together with the chairs, which are also actors; this interaction renders the memorial a dialogical space. With its non-representational, ephemeral and empty qualities, the memorial is considered a "counter-monument" (Szymanski, 2015 andDeTurk, 2017), since it invites interaction, can change over time, and opens up the memory to the viewer through action and looking within (Young, 1992). This possibility of multiple reinterpretations is made possible through users' enactive-embodied interaction with the chairs and the entire space through different actions and events, in an ongoing dialogical relationship between the physical space, its history, and its users today. ...
The role of the body in architectural experience: the Holocaust and memory of place Abstract The memorialization of sites of collective trauma is sensitive territory and a challenge for architects and spatial designers. Traditional approaches tend to oscillate between the closed, rhetorical monument or visually-oriented narrative display, and the shocking or sensationalist, falling short of allowing for profound, affective experiences that do not dehumanize the victims. New cognitive science understandings of the body-mind-environment connection and the role of the body and senses in meaning-making have influenced interdisciplinary dialogue and the new turn in experiential architecture. The problem of communicating that which cannot be expressed in words has been explored in terms of embodied experience through fields such as phenomenology, human geography, and performance studies. Several publications explore atmosphere, affect, enactivism, and affordances in architecture, also addressing heritage and memory. This paper examines how architecture as mnemonic, by directly engaging the body and senses, can invite the user to connect with past events through perspective-taking on an intimate, experiential level. Different spatial design approaches to this end will be examined through case studies of Holocaust memory spaces, analyzed through the lens of enactive-embodied cognitive science and perceptual affordance theory, as well as personal reflections based on site visits. The aim is to improve our understanding of how the body might act as instrument for intersubjectivity and empathy in architecture, towards more sensitive design approaches enabling open, intimate, profound experiences of memory of place and its events.
... Its therapeutic potential seems to lie in the ability to vent emotionally by talking to the lost loved ones, and, through verbal representation, to make an introspective self-journey, conscious and unconscious, "to bring partial order to a disordered part of the psyche, and to heal (ivi, p. 119)." • The object "booth" through the reuse put in action by Itaru Sasaki, with the involvement of a creative process becomes a memorial, or even better, a counter-monument (Young, 1992), an experimental, unofficial form of memorialization whose existence is based on the concepts of emotional involvement, active participation, and absence (Galasso, 2024). • The booth, evolving into a safe mnemotope, gradually gains public recognition. ...
There is a conceptual discrepancy between the expression “space of memory” and “place of memory.” In a different realm, the same seems to happen with the terms “safe space” and “safe place.” Coexisting but distinct worlds are explored in this article through the lens of the safe mnemotope: a place where memories have a fertile ground to settle and condense, where people find a safe dimension to externalize their inner emotions connected to the past. Based on a personal encounter with the Wind Phone in Japan, the article identifies some of the attributes that can make a place of memory a safe place, proposing them as initial guidelines to inspire the recognition and enhancement of realities that support the expression of complex feelings, providing a refuge where individuals can confront with their grief.
... Lejos de exaltar la figura de un héroe, la noción de «antimonumento» o «contramonumento» busca poner en primer plano la problemática que atraviesan las víctimas. Según James Young (2018), se origina debido a la desconfianza en la concepción tradicional de los monumentos conmemorativos. El autor sostiene que, en tanto los monumentos convencionales simplifican la complejidad de los recuerdos y del acto de memoria, pretenden «acallar la conciencia y redimir los eventos trágicos» funcionando «como un consuelo fácil que pretende "reparar" la memoria de un pueblo» (272). ...
... Influenced by counter-monument and anti-memorial approaches, the design form of the monument has since diversified. Horizontal lying flat and disappearing and sinking design forms of the monument began to appear [19,104,105]. Representative examples are the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the National September 11 Memorial. The horizontal and lying flat design form places the memorial on the ground, blending with the surrounding environment and emphasizing the connection with the ground. ...
The monument, or the memorial, as a place of memory and emotional support, has been the focus of scholarly attention. Although existing studies have explored its space’s materialization, identity, history, and memory content, the materials about its design transformation have yet to be deeply excavated. Based on the relevant theories of place and place-making, the researchers constructed a knowledge system of the place-making model, the spatial vector pattern, and the worship behaviors of monuments. On this basis, a qualitative research methodology is adopted. Through case studies and participant observation, the design transformation of the monument/memorial is interpreted in the following five dimensions: function theme, morphology style, spatial relationship, visitor experience, and symbolic meaning. The results of this study show that the monument/memorial tends to promote in-depth public reflection and critical engagement with history, reflecting changes in how society perceives historical events. This research provides new perspectives for understanding the multidimensionality of the monument/memorial but also emphasizes the need to continue exploring its interaction with the socio-cultural context.
... James E. Young observes, based on an examination of the production of monuments today, a transition from traditional fixed forms to variable ones, from which he establishes the concept of "counter-monument". 13 In essence, the counter-monument as a contemporary monument-form formalises its quality of impermanence and celebrates the changes of its form across time and space. It seeks to stimulate memory by pointing explicitly to its changing appearance. ...
... Siguiendo con el tema del observador, postulamos el carácter alternativo del land art con respecto a las tendencias hegemónicas en arte. Acordemente con Young (1992) todo el arte propende, de manera autoritaria, a conferir el rol de contemplador pasivo al público. Por tanto, el arte de la tierra plantea un ligamen distinto entre la obra y quienes la perciben, debido a que exige posicionamientos, cada uno con consecuencias panorámicas diferenciadas. ...
Este articulo filosófico trata acerca de dos campos emergentes actualmente. Por un lado, tenemos la teoría de la complejidad, y de otro el arte de la tierra (land art). El escrito reconstruye y compara los principales argumentos de ambas propuestas. Sugerimos que el land art se adapta al mundo biosocial, según lo representa la teoría citada. Resulta posible hallar en el land art una propuesta perspectivista y basada en las relaciones. Más aun, esta tendencia artística involucra procesos recursivos, hologramáticos y dialógicos.
... Su protección como Monumento Histórico supone la incorporación de nuevas monumentalidades -en ocasiones generadoras de disensos políticos (Kisić 2016)-al inventario patrimonial del Estado, en una ampliación y resignificación semántica del sentido original de la categoría; un novedoso giro en las políticas del patrimonio en el cual se acoge la reivindicación de memorias colectivas (Halbwachs 2004), subte-Patrimonialización, despojo material y nuevas estrategias de puesta en valor de los sitios de memoria Villa San Luis De las Condes y balneario popular Rocas de Santo Domingo (Chile, 1970 -actualidad) (Pollak 2006), subalternas, contrahegemónicas y populares (De La Cadena 1990), que disputan las verdades oficialmente establecidas y relevan pasados e identidades históricas distintas a las instituidas por el discurso oficial (Bustamante 2016). Se trata de patrimonios incómodos (Prats 2005) o contramonumentos (Young 1992), en tanto registros materiales de la violencia política y el terrorismo de Estado (Alegría y Uribe 2014) que han sido protegidos oficialmente en un esfuerzo por responder a las demandas ciudadanas por verdad, justicia y memoria (Seguel 2019), conforme a valores que no se relacionan con el relato histórico tradicional, sino con las consecuencias negativas de las violaciones a los derechos humanos. ...
Este artículo aborda los procesos de patrimonialización de dos sitios de memoria protegidos como Monumentos Históricos, las ruinas de la ex villa San Luis de Las Condes y del ex balneario popular Rocas de Santo Domingo, ambos lugares utilizados para la represión política y/o la resistencia contra la dictadura cívico militar chilena de Augusto Pinochet. En base a un trabajo de campo etnográfico y un análisis historiográfico, se reflexiona sobre la insuficiencia de la Ley de Monumentos Nacionales para el efectivo resguardo y preservación de los sitios protegidos y el rol que agrupaciones de víctimas de violaciones a los derechos humanos han tenido a fin de evitar su progresiva intervención y destrucción. A través de esta aproximación, se analizan los espacios como monumentos desintegrados, reflexionando sobre la emergencia de nuevas tecnologías en la puesta en valor de espacios acechados por el progresivo despojo material.
... Parece-nos que isso que Young (1992) chama de contramonumento sugere um método para abordarmos a vida dos monumentos -incluindo aqueles que assumem formas típicas. Em um plano, somos levados a dar atenção aos elementos materiais desses objetos. ...
... C. Thi Nguyen (2019) defends a similar view about the power of commemorations to mark commitments, and puts a bit more flesh on the bones of how they can also reinforce them. He provides the starkly beautiful example of Hamburg's Monument Against Fascism (see also Young 1992). The monument was a 12-meter-tall metal tower into which visitors were invited to engrave their names. ...
Recent years have seen various forms of honorific public art – statues, monuments, and the like – brought under renewed moral scrutiny. This scrutiny has resulted in some high-profile removals, some defacement and additional contextualization to augment existing objects, and some cases of the status quo prevailing. Scholarly treatment of the issues has similarly resulted in arguments that articulate competing values that support removal, modification or preservation. I bring the insights of these arguments to bear on specifically military commemorations, where I argue that they have ample application, but where they do not exhaust the moral complexity to be confronted. This is true first because military commemoration introduces a novel moral concern of militarism, and second because military commemoration frequently has a distinctively normative function of expressing gratitude. Both these points are most powerfully observed in collections of commemorations, rather than individual monuments, a distinction that deepens ongoing discussions about problematic commemorations.
... From a historical point of view, these projects can be juxtaposed with Jochen Gerz's Counter-Monument, 25 but I believe that Deller's works are more a continuation of the actions of political art collectives in the 1970s and 1980s, and I am thinking above all of Group Material -which disbanded in 1996 26 -or the previously mentioned art activist Suzanne Lacy. As in their work, in the operations of the British artist there is no truth to be sought with an ideological attitude, rather the aim is to try to share ideas and above all to try to listen to the many dissonant voices and counter-narratives that have not been given sufficient space in the dominant discourse. ...
"I wanted to make a memorial that was alive, not an object or set of objects to make a pilgrimage to; a memorial that would come to you, that would appear in your city, town or shopping centre, intervening in your daily life". With these words Jeremy Deller introduces us to his We Are Here Because We Are Here, a true monument celebrating the centenary of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916, in which almost twenty thousand British soldiers succumbed. In fact, with the help of Rufus Norris, director of the National Theatre, Deller organised a gigantic mass performance in which about 2000 volunteers worked, disguised as soldiers of the First World War who wandered around the main cities of the United Kingdom without anyone having warned the citizens of their presence. In my paper I will try to investigate, through Deller's work (and through the comparison with other artistic experiences), how some contemporary artistic interventions try to exploit the mechanisms of performance in order to reconstruct historical events not only relying on the strategies of re-enactment, but also resorting to an immersive and unexpected relationship able to produce an extreme involvement. We Are Here Because We Are Here thus contributes to the reconstruction of memory not through the description of historical facts, nor even through their celebration, but through a process that solicits the emotional states to which, in the harshest moments of the war, the community is subjected.
... As facets of the symbolic landscape, various authors have attempted to unravel the meanings bound up in monuments and at particular monumental sites (Young 1992, Johnson 1994, 1995, Peet 1996, Atkinson and Cosgrove 1998, Hill 1998, Osborne 1998, Whelan 2001, Gordon and Osborne 2004, Larsen 2012. According to Martin Auster (1997, p. 219), 'public monuments are of special interest as focal points of meaning in the landscape' and multiple layers of meaning can be unearthed even within the most abstract of monuments. ...
During the nineteenth century, the first Duke of Wellington’s renown was such that the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland funded a number of public monuments to celebrate his life and achievements. Three examples of these works were raised in Ireland, his native country. They were located in Dublin, Meath and Tipperary, respectively. Through unravelling the history of these monuments in the nineteenth century, this article explores how concepts of identity found form and expression, were shaped and reshaped, in and through the Irish landscape. The political and geographic context, combined with the personal associations of the commemorative subject, offer particular opportunity for the exploration of British and imperial identities, their composition and their relative strength and prevalence in the cultural landscapes of nineteenth-century Ireland. The nature and significance of Protestant Ascendancy and Roman Catholic interactions with the monuments are also considered.
... O contramonumento propõe um lugar de reivindicação de um discurso paliado, muitas vezes materializado justamente pelo não-dizer. (Noble, 2020, p. 182) Por sua vez, James Young (1992) também reflete sobre os contramonumentos os coloca como desconstrutores do regimento narrativo que os monumentos históricos tomam como personalidades de vanglória e membros da elite classe. O objetivo é contestar, através da criação artística, discursos de memória estabelecidos, provocando uma imagem que depende daquele que é contestado. ...
O recente aumento da derrubada de monumentos em várias partes do mundo tem reacendido debates sobre memória, identidade e o papel dos símbolos na sociedade. Esta reflexão se debruça sobre a intersecção entre iconoclastia, patrimônio cultural e representação, explorando suas nuances e implicações através de diferentes contextos históricos, sociais e geográficos. O estudo se baseia em uma ampla gama de literaturas, desde teóricos contemporâneos como Silvio Almeida e sua exploração do racismo estrutural, até trabalhos clássicos de Walter Benjamin e seus pensamentos sobre arte e política. O foco é particularmente acentuado no Brasil, onde episódios envolvendo o monumento de Borba Gato e ações similares espelham um confronto entre narrativas estabelecidas e demandas emergentes por reconhecimento e justiça. A metodologia adotada combina uma análise interdisciplinar de fontes primárias e secundárias, bem como uma consideração das manifestações contemporâneas de iconoclastia em redes sociais e meios de comunicação. As descobertas revelam uma complexa tapeçaria de significados e motivações por trás desses atos, que vão desde rejeições de legados coloniais até desafios às narrativas hegemônicas. Em conclusão, a derrubada de monumentos não é apenas um ato de destruição, mas também de recriação e redefinição do espaço público e da memória coletiva
This paper examines the Dread culture that emerged during and after the Grenada Revolution through the lens of a pro-revolutionary song and memorial inscription to assess how different memories commemorate the event. This paper puts forth the central argument that Dread culture signifies a resistive memory aesthetic that define the people’s experiences with the Grenada Revolution. It locates organic, nostalgic, and uncomfortable memories that permit access to the revolutionary self through textual aesthetics and memory texts. These memory texts convey diverse meanings of the people’s revolutionary experiences, contradictions, and eruptions of identity and re-memory forty years after the Grenada Revolution.
Este artículo examina la cultura Dread que surgió durante y después de la Revolución de Granada, a través del análisis de una canción pro-revolucionaria y una inscripción conmemorativa, con el fin de evaluar cómo distintas memorias rememoran dicho acontecimiento. El artículo sostiene como argumento central que la cultura Dread representa una estética de la memoria resistente que define las experiencias del pueblo con respecto a la Revolución de Granada. Identifica memorias orgánicas, nostálgicas e incómodas que permiten el acceso al yo revolucionario mediante estéticas textuales y textos de memoria. Estos textos de memoria transmiten significados diversos sobre las experiencias revolucionarias del pueblo, sus contradicciones y las irrupciones de identidad y re-memoria, cuarenta años después de la Revolución de Granada.
This article contributes to debates swirling around one relatively new way of representing LGBTQ pasts: the monumental. This form—which applies “a weightiness, timelessness, and grandeur” to its subjects—only became available to queer Americans starting in the 1980s. Previously, LGBTQ Americans primarily interacted with their pasts in what Thomas Dunn calls “tactical” and “ephemeral” ways. Queer monumentality has helped activists overcome unique memory challenges LGBTQ communities face and forward political projects. The author demonstrates there are dangers in applying monumentality to queer people, however, such as contributing to homonormativity, which represents and empowers some queer people while erasing or disciplining others. Rather than rejecting monumentality, the author argues it is possible to create a robust queer monumentality that addresses these dangers. Her intervention is to propose monumental muralism as one compelling way forward. Specifically, she argues that The Great Wall of Los Angeles , one of the world’s longest murals and subject of a recent exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, can serve as a model for designers of future queer monuments.
This chapter examines a global history of monumental art and urban design, including perspectives on public memory, national symbolism and emerging artistic approaches to memorialisation. These include ‘counter-memorial’ and ‘anti-memorial’ approaches and their role in the preservation of cultural memory, embracing the perspectives of diverse scholars, designers and artists, explored via a range of historical and contemporary projects. Architectural vocabularies, spatial contexts and issues of figuration and abstraction are considered, and the chapter concludes with a brief examination of First Nations visibility and recognition in monuments and museums.
This article examines entanglements between past, present and futures of queerness visible in monuments as materialized forms of memory. We distinguish between queer monuments (i.e. positioning, and potentially imposing reified representations of queer history or memory) and the queering of monuments (i.e. challenging heteronormative or otherwise reductionist historical discourses, practices or memorial cultures of remembrance). By reflecting on oscillations between institutionalization, recognition, commodification and counter-memorial practice, we suggest the queering of monuments as an unfinished conceptual trope that embraces the non-conclusiveness of the past and future. Queering monuments nuances underlying tensions about the meaning and aesthetics of queer-themed heritage sites, objects and subjects, which emerge from multi-stakeholder arrangements of monument-making. Our approach chimes with critical heritage and monument studies that emphasize performative, affective-emotional and ghostly dimensions of heritage. By pulling hauntology into queer memorial discourse, we discuss queerness as an embodied and epistemological appearance that can challenge presentist, monolithic and thus potentially exclusive understandings of both heritage and monuments. Through queer temporality we situate our reflections in the public monument ARCUS – Shadow of a Rainbow – Memorial for Homosexuals Persecuted during the Nazi Era in Vienna, Austria (2023). We unpack the conflictual constellations of past and present voices, materialities and memories around the sculpture, using the rainbow motif (which became a symbol for queer people in the 1970s) to remember the persecution of queers during the Nazi Era. The monument begs the question how Vienna seeks to brand itself as a ‘rainbow city’, while continuously displacing queer practices from urban public space. Queering, in sum, embraces ghosts of past and present complex histories, trauma and joy instead of squeezing them into smooth or unambiguous narratives. Queering monuments thus outline a conflict-attuned approach to queer(ing) art, curation and collaboration.
This chapter discusses a project to counter the colonial fantasy presented by Cooks’ Cottage, a large monument to white colonial nation-building located in a central Melbourne park. In 2018, Paola Balla, Clare Land, and Kate Golding came together to respond collaboratively to an approach from the City of Melbourne to assist the City in ‘incorporating Indigenous perspectives’ into the historical displays at Cooks’ Cottage. They renegotiated the brief from the City of Melbourne and produced an image-rich monograph, Blak Cook Book (2021), a set of provocations that platforms sharp critique of Cook and his memorialisation by First Nations and other artists, activists and scholars. Balla, Land and Golding worked from the starting point that the Cottage itself is irredeemably colonial; they also came up with several propositions that could counter the Cottage more substantively than any gestures towards incorporating Indigenous perspectives into its existing displays.
In this chapter, settler artist and researcher Amy Spiers speculates about forms of imaginative visual and spatial justice that could be enacted to address contentious monuments and truth-tell the past in public spaces permeated with colonial place-making. The chapter focuses on a critical examination of the bluestone memorial obelisk to John Batman, located at the Queen Victoria Market, Naarm (Melbourne), that inaccurately describes Batman as founder of Melbourne on a site that was in 1835 ‘then unoccupied’. Drawing on lessons from previous creative (counter-)monuments addressing traumatic histories in Naarm (Melbourne); Nipaluna, Lutruwita (Hobart, Tasmania) and Berlin, Germany, Spiers argues that the City of Melbourne to date has failed to provide substantive remembrances to the victims of Batman’s horrific deeds that includes mass murder, deception and land theft. Addressing speculation that the Batman obelisk will quietly disappear due to a forthcoming multi-million-dollar renewal of the market, Spiers’ chapter argues that the redevelopment provides a significant opportunity for the City of Melbourne to fulfil its declared commitment to truth-tell the impact of the colonial past by meaningfully atoning for Batman’s memorial and legacy, and acknowledging the anguish caused to First Peoples, by fostering a culture of remembrance through creative commemorations.
This article presents the results of a study of two recent Latin American cases of counter-monumental interventions initiated by feminist and dissident actors: the intervention Amor y Furia in Santiago de Chile and the creation of La Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan in Mexico City. The analysis of the two cases is empirically based on a combination of social media publications and interviews with central actors conducted during fieldwork in both cities. The analysis demonstrates how the interventions made visible and enriched the conflicts of memory that stem from the traditional monumentalization of national histories, whilst fortifying feminist and dissident movements through an exposure of the continuity of their demands. Based on this combined analysis of the interventions’ aesthetic representations of patriarchal violence on a variety of temporal levels and their role in the reappropriation of public space, we argue that both interventions are in their own way expressions of what we have chosen to call ch’ixi memory activism; an affective, cathartic and aesthetically cacophonous practice through which long-lasting injustices are exposed in the public space.
At the intersection of memory and feminist studies, this article examines the issue of suffrage and feminist monumental commemoration in the United States. Starting from the deficit of statues representing female historical figures in the public space, it analyzes the conception and reception of two important monuments honoring women’s suffrage (Portrait Monument 1921 and the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument 2020). While those monuments have somewhat broken the “bronze ceiling”, they testify to the mechanics of exclusion and inclusion at work both in the construction of history and memory. Then, the article takes on a broader perspective, questioning the extent to which traditional monuments, as products of a patriarchal culture and memory, can properly commemorate modern feminism. The essay identifies two trends, one consisting of transforming the bronze through various strategies, the other of “breaking the bronze” by replacing it with other materials and proposing new memory frameworks belonging to what James E. Young has labeled countermonuments. Still, the article ultimately questions the limits of the monument itself and points to the notion of interactive spaces as perhaps the most adequate sites of memory for the complex, multifaceted, contested, and contemporary movement that feminism(s) stand(s) for.
In 2021, a Cold War Veterans Memorial Commission was announced and immediately, I became interested in this concept. Who are the veterans? What are the memories? And what are the repercussions of giving permanence to this specific history during the post-Cold War era? Writing is the only form I can conceive of for such a memorial, as it allows for a post-structural analysis of memory, experience and life. Writing as a method of inquiry allows one to consider the relationship between personal narrative, materiality and research. In this article, I explore these questions through a braided narrative that weaves together family narratives, historical time periods and imaginings of myself-as-memorial. But like braiding hair, or yarn, some threads become tangled with other threads, representing an entanglement of time and experience, and of individual and collective memories. Not meant to be easily delineated, transitions between narratives are used to evoke the sudden, and sometimes abrupt, emergence of memory. Additionally, by positioning a memorial as a person, questions of the humanness of memory and the nonhumanness of memory objects arise.
Kontroverse Denkmäler polarisieren. Genauso herrscht Uneinigkeit darüber, wie mit ihnen umgegangen werden soll. Künstlerische Interventionen bieten eine Alternative zur Polemik „keep vs topple“, indem sie zeitlich begrenzt und nicht invasiv unbeachtete und unterdrückte Perspektiven auf Geschichtserzählungen für die Öffentlichkeit zugänglich machen. Die vorliegende Bachelorarbeit untersucht anhand zweier künstlerischer Interventionen, Hew Lockes Foreign Exchange (2022) und Hannimari Jokinens afrika-hamburg.de (2004-05), wie (Deutungs-)Macht an Denkmälern ausgehandelt und ganzheitliche Lösungsansätze zum Umgang mit konfliktivem Erbe erarbeitet werden können.
This paper contributes to the literature by examining the production of Holocaust (Shoah) memory in Thessaloniki through multisensory embodied practices as imagined performances of 'witnessing by adoption' as well as resistance against the dominant discourse on the city's cultural heritage and identity. Holocaust commemoration is no longer
anchored in public monuments but intertwined with social activism and
“occurs” in urban space as an ongoing performance of claiming the city
as it could be.
This article explores the significance of memorial plaques in Russian cities as sites of history, memory and aesthetics that create a new sensorium of the urban sphere. The plaques, affixed to historic buildings, serve as tangible markers that commemorate significant events and figures from the past. Taking the case of the historic center of St. Petersburg, the article examines how these plaques create a sense of historicity and contribute to the formation of a shared cultural background within the urban sphere. The plaques evolve from simple inscriptions to more elaborate and visually appealing designs. It also highlights the controversies surrounding the selection of individuals to be materialized and remembered and the aesthetic concerns raised by some residents. Meanwhile, the two contemporary projects challenge traditional commemorative practices and their aesthetics: Last Address, which commemorates victims of political repression through individualized plaques, and the Gandhi artist group’s street art interventions. These projects offer alternative approaches to memorialization and engage in dialogue with existing monuments and plaques. These micro-interventions show grassroot resistance within memorializing practices and aesthetics. The article emphasizes the contested nature of public space and the role of memorial plaques in shaping collective memory and historical narratives in Russian cities.
The memorials commemorating Rwanda’s 1994 genocide are rare in their use of human remains and depictions of violence. These memorials have been widely criticized by European and North American scholars, who focus on the danger of depicting bodily vulnerability, arguing that it supports the regime’s politics of exclusion. However, by conflating what is exclusionary about the framing of the aesthetic of bodily vulnerability at Rwandan memorials with the aesthetic itself, these critics write off vulnerability altogether, risking a colonialist stance that reduces the Rwandan context to the non-political by fitting its commemorative politics into a false dichotomy of emotion and reason. In conversation with theories of vulnerability and the human by Judith Butler and Achille Mbembe, I argue that the aesthetic of vulnerability, when framed in an inclusive and critical way, can provide hope by supplying a way to see others’ bodies as non-disposable and oppose debasing forms of power.
Este trabajo analiza la representación de la esclavitud y la libertad en las narrativas históricas nacionales y en el movimiento artístico haitiano Atis Rezistans, tomando para ello el caso de la escultura Freedom!, creada en 2006 en Puerto Príncipe, en un proyecto de colaboración de los Atis Rezistans con National Museums Liverpool y APROSIFA, y que desde 2007 forma parte de la exposición permanente del International Slavery Museum en Liverpool. Para tal análisis se utiliza el concepto de contramonumento de James Young, pues la propuesta es que la escultura de los artistas haitianos se opone a las representaciones monumentales tradicionales surgidas desde el discurso oficial que se enmarca dentro de la memoria histórica nacional. Con dicho análisis se propone Freedom! como un trabajo artístico contestatario y una alternativa para entender la memoria y la realidad a través de la colectividad y de un espíritu de resistencia plasmado en el ensamblaje y el reciclaje.
Study on controversial commorative monuments in public space
The term unstable monument describes a process of destabilising the temporal sequence of event to monument to counter-monument through different stages of preservation and commemoration. “Unstable Monuments” approaches settler colonialism as a structure rather than an event, and in doing so demonstrates the continuing presence of colonialism as a frame through which history is remembered. The event construct – articulated from theories by Patrick Wolfe, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, and Ann Laura Stoler – acts as a pervasive structure that is repeatedly affirmed by the linear sequencing of event to monument to counter-monument. From this, the project materialises the hauntings embedded within monuments of the British monarchy in Australia through various stages of public art procedure and policy, drawing from the copies of these monuments around the world. It uses 3D scanning and printing, combined with various institutional processes involved before the display of the monument in the public sphere, to problematise the production stages that limit counter-monumental design. The project produces a series of lost-wax cast sculptures based on copies and proposes them to various Australian public art institutions for temporary display. This disrupts an appropriate sequence of commemoration, drawing attention to what Eve Tuck and C. Ree describe as ruin through the physical imprint of ghosts onto sites. In doing so, the linear progression of settler narratives is interrupted by dismantling and repurposing the various stages of production. The project draws attention to the preservation of settler history through the potential of the copy.
Climate Chronograph is a memorial project designed by architect Erik Jensen and landscape designer Rebecca Sunter, of former Oakland-based architectural firm Azimuth Land Craft. It won the ‘Memorial for the Future’ competition in 2016, a competition organised by the United States National Park Service and the National Capital Planning Commission in collaboration with the Van Alen Institute. Climate Chronograph proposed to record rising seas on the land, marking in space the past, present and anticipated catastrophe of global warming and the subsequent losses it involves. I aim in this chapter to make evident that Anthropocenic memorials are not necessarily located in a failed future, but more significantly, are already present in the past: in lost lands and polluted ecosystems. With this initial case study, I want to suggest directions for examining memorial forms and practices, breaking away from Western-centric and universalist narratives and towards potential countermemorial paradigms.
At the end of November 2016, a unique and intruding art project took place in the city of Hamburg, Germany, a result of collaboration between German artists and a Chinese artist, who all seek to commemorate the Chinese victims who lived in the city pre- World War II but had to suffer the injustices of the Nazi regime. The project lasted three days and was presented in various locations throughout the city, while including many artistic mediums alongside scholarly work. By referring to the main events of that weekend, the paper traces after a “forgotten” past that many people refuse to look at, not to say to take responsibility for it, while in contrast, the art continues to extract it from the depths of oblivion and forced amnesia – to the dismay of many.
The performance installation Moral Horizons of Pain (MHP)
responds to calls to centre touch, presence, and poetics in
the praxis of medical care. In their account of the project,
researcher-creators Pratim Sengupta, Ariel Ducey, Martina Ann
Kelly, Santanu Dutta, and Erin Knox describe MHP’s critical
framing in relation to negative-form counter-monuments and
Third Form theatre. They describe how the project allowed the
spectator-participants to recognize the moral horizons too often
silenced in technocentric approaches to pain and suggest how
such projects can contribute to broader social justice initiatives in
the medical humanities.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.