Monuments and unrequited love. Looking for a non-pacificatory model of memorialisation // The statue is serene, the lover unrequited. Looking for a non-pacificatory model of memorialisation by Jimmie Durham & A Stick in the Forest by the Side of the Road

The debate about monuments is polarized: should certain monuments be removed, or would that mean censoring, rewriting, or forgetting history?

This conversation by lumbung artist Jimmie Durham & A Stick in the Forest by the Side of the Road departs from the premise that this polarization relies on a pacificatory understanding of memorialization, based on the possibility of a sensus communis and of universal history—or, possibly, on the fantasy of a love story between State and monument.

The speakers propose a move beyond a binary of good and bad monuments, looking, instead, for the possibility of a Benjaminian and Nietzschean turn: thinking of memorialization as a conflictual and contested space, always already violent, never pacified.

Directions