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Moving Monuments seminar on the histories, materialities, and temporalities of the surfaces of monuments and statues in public space.In recent years, there has been a surge in attention towards interventions targeting monuments and public statues. Images depicting statues modified with paint or graffiti, as well as of the subsequent cleaning processes, where city officials remove the paint, have circulated globally following the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020. This has raised awareness towards the role of the monument in the ongoing negotiations of the materialization of commemorative expressions in public spaces. As paint, graffiti, and other interactions with public statues are often erased, traces from how people intervene with statues in public space, and what messages these interventions may carry from demonstrations to “every day” use, are rarely preserved.
Whether viewed as acts of protest, re-inscription, re-materialization, or other forms of engagement, these actions, alongside ongoing conservation efforts, emphasizes an important, but often-overlooked aspect of public monuments: their surfaces. As scholarly research and public debates adapts a traditional focus on the aesthetics of public statuary as adhering to ideas about form and materiality, their surfaces remain unexplored. But as art historian Lise Skytte Jakobsen points to in Metaskulptur (2019), the surface is an agile layer that can be altered, removed, or added to, profoundly influencing our perception of the sculpture.
While monuments pose as symbols of durability and permanence in discussions of public history and memory, the maintenance work needed to secure that they appear stable and lasting often goes unnoticed. Despite efforts to maintain their static presence, all materials inevitably decay. There remains, in short, a pressing need to examine the histories, ideologies, and temporalities at play on and in the surface of monuments, and its effects on their aesthetic, political and commemorative function.
With this seminar, we aim to delve into the dynamic nature of monument surfaces and their impact on public perception. We wish to bring people together for joint discussions and considerations on how enriching the vocabulary and terminology surrounding interventions and preservation efforts can enhance both public and academic discourse. By exploring the intersections of materiality, temporality, and memory, we aim to deepen our understanding of how monuments' images, meanings, and physical presence are negotiated, both historically and in contemporary contexts.
The seminar is arranged within the frames of the research project “Moving Monuments: The Material Life of Sculpture from the Danish Colonial Era” funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and housed by the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, UCPH.
Moving Monuments is organized by Mathias Danbolt and Amalie Skovmøller at Department of Arts and Cultural Studies.
For questions, please contact Ida Hornung Havgaard at [email protected]
Programme:
09:30: Arrival and coffee
10:00: Session 1 moderated by Ida Hornung Havgaard
Introduction by Mathias Danbolt, Amalie Skovmøller, and Ida Hornung Havgaard
Speaker #1 Lise Skytte Jakobsen, School of Communication and Culture – Art History, Aarhus University
11:10: Break
11:30: Session 2 moderated by Amalie Skovmøller
Speaker #2 Louise Cone, Contemporary Art & Sculpture Conservator, SMK: Conserving the changing materiality of surfaces
Speaker #3 Emma Bryning, Department of Archaeology, University of York: Mark-making through history: vandalism or tradition?
12:50: Lunch
13:50: Session 3 moderated by Mathias Danbolt
Speaker #4 Tim Cole, Department of History (Historical Studies), University of Bristol: From red to blue, ‘F—k off slave trader’ to ‘PRICK’, and cleaning to conservation: The Colston Statue, graffiti and the museum, 1998-2024
Speaker #5 Jim Brogden, School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds: Performative protest: the permanence and ephemerality of re-inscribed monuments.
15:10: Coffee break
15:40: Session 4 moderated by Amalie Skovmøller
Speaker #6 Kim Gurney, Independent researcher, Cape Town: Zombie monuments: The second lives of a voided plinth and a respawning nose
Speaker #7 Terne Thorsen, Department of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen: On the Surface: Climate Activists’ Reversible Iconoclasm
17:00: Break
17:15: Session 5 – Final discussion moderated by Elizabeth Marlowe, Department of Art, Colgate University
18:00: Reception w. bubbles
The seminar is free and open for all.
You can find more information here: https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/moving-monuments/calendar/scratching-the-surface/
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Auditorium 4A-0-69, Njalsgade 76, København, Region Hovedstaden, DK, 2300, Njalsgade 69, 2300 København S, Danmark,Copenhagen, Copenhagen , Denmark
