From the toppling and removal of statues to ongoing debates on contested objects, buildings, and landscapes, monuments have—once again—come to play a pivotal role in mobilizing and rearticulating struggles for recognition. Inherent to the design and construction of monuments are wider processes and structures of memorialization that reify social configurations.
Editors
Nick Axel
Ludo Groen
Nikolaus Hirsch
Marina Otero Verzier
Monument is complemented by a series of online screenings and conversations that took place as part of Het Nieuwe Instituut’s Thursday Night Live! program.
“Unearthing Monuments and the Construction of History”
with Dima Srouji, Manuel Correa, and Marina Otero Verzier
October 1, 2020, 7:30pm, Het Nieuwe Instituut Online
“Monuments and the Reification of Anti-Black Violence”
with The Black Archives and Quinsy Gario
October 15, 2020, 7:30pm, Het Nieuwe Instituut Online
“Resignifications in Central and Eastern Europe”
with Vasyl Cherepanyn, Milica Tomić, and Nick Axel
November 12, 2020, 7:30pm, Het Nieuwe Instituut Online
“Monuments and the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage”
with Sumayya Vally, Wayne Modest, and Nick Axel
December 10, 2020, 7:30pm, Het Nieuwe Instituut Online
Please visit Het Nieuwe Instituut’s website to rewatch the online screenings.
This series is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and Het Nieuwe Instituut. The national institute for architecture, design, and digital culture of the Netherlands, Het Nieuwe Instituut is directed by Guus Beumer (artistic and general director) and Josien Paulides (business director).
Sarmen Beglarian is an art curator based in Warsaw, Poland. He is curating Biuro Wystaw and Keret House, units of the Polish Modern Art Foundation.
Vasyl Cherepanyn is Head of the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), an institutional organizer of the Kyiv Biennial.
Manuel Correa has an MA in Research Architecture at the Goldsmiths University of London, and recently worked as part of Forensic Architecture. His work focuses on enforced disappearance and post-conflict memory reconstruction in contemporary societies.
Quinsy Gario is an activist and visual and performance artist from the Dutch Caribbean. His most well-known work, Zwarte Piet Is Racisme (2011–2012), critiqued the general knowledge surrounding the racist Dutch figure Zwarte Piet (Black Pete).
Arna Mačkić is an architect and co-founder of Studio L A and the former head of Architectural Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Mačkić is also part of Bosnian Girl, a collective that campaigns for an inclusive historiography and commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide in the Netherlands.
Philipp Oswalt is an architect and writer. Since 2006 he is Professor for Architecture Theory and Design at Kassel University.
Valentina Rozas-Kraus is a licensed architect, a postdoctoral collegiate fellow in the history of art at the University of Michigan, and the author of Ni Tan Elefante, Ni Tan Blanco (2014) and Disputar la Ciudad (2018).
Dima Srouji is a Palestinian architect, designer, artist, and educator working in the expanded context of interdisciplinary research-based projects using multiple mediums. She is a Design Studio Critic at Birzeit University, Palestine.
The Black Archives is an Amsterdam-based historical archive for conversations, activities, and literature from Black and other perspectives that are often overlooked elsewhere. The Black Archives documents the history of black emancipation movements and individuals in the Netherlands, and consists of unique book collections, archives, and artifacts that are the legacy of Black Dutch writers and scientists.
Milica Tomić is a Professor at TU Graz’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and works as an independent artist exploring interrelations between art, society and public space by researching, unearthing and bringing to public debate issues related to memory, trauma and social amnesia.
Sumayya Vally is a co-founder and director at Counterspace, an all-women architecture and research firm in Johannesburg. She currently a unit leader at the University of Johannesburg's Graduate School of Architecture.
Mabel O. Wilson is an architectural designer and cultural historian. She has authored Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016) and Negro Building: African Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012). At Columbia University she is a Professor of Architecture, a co-director of Global Africa Lab and the Associate Director at the Institute for Research in African American Studies. She’s a founding member of Who Builds Your Architecture? (WBYA?) a collective that advocates for fair labor practices on building sites worldwide.
Robert Jan van Pelt is professor of cultural history at University of Waterloo School of Architecture. In 1997–98, he presided over the team that developed the master plan to preserve the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is the author of many books, including Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (1996, with Debórah Dwork) and The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (2002), an account of his experience as expert witness for the defense in the British libel case Irving vs. Penguin and Lipstadt related to Holocaust denial. He is Chief Curator of the traveling exhibition Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away (2017) and co-curated The Evidence Room at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.