Monument Lab Town Hall goes virtual and transnational—exploring new models and practices for how we might shape the past in public spaces.

This year’s 2020 Monument Lab Town Hall annual conference goes virtual and transnational, facilitating pressing conversations around what, whom, and how to remember in public spaces across the globe. This year’s symposium kicks off Shaping the Past, a collaborative project in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb).

On October 8 and 9 (12-3pm EST), Monument Lab Town Hall explores new models and practices for how we might shape the past in ways that continue to confront legacies of racist, sexist, and colonial systems of knowledge and to strengthen democracy through public spaces. Such efforts include community organization and civic engagement tactics that include multiple publics in these monumental matters. The Town Hall features a series of four keynote conversations and video presentations from artists/activists working across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Germany. Across two days of conversations, curators, writers, artists, and activists will think together about memory work across borders, the relationship between art and activism. Monument Lab Town Hall will explore critical and creative practices we might need towards monumental justice, education, and care.

Keynote Participants include Paul Ramírez Jonas, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Seph Rodney, Daniela Schiller, Jasmine Wahi, Mabel Wilson, Mirjam Zadoff

Video Presentations from the 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellows: Hadi Al Khatib, Ulf Aminde, Tomie Arai, Sergio Beltrán-García, Thalia Fernández Bustamante, MADAD (Damon Davis, Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and De Nichols), Ada Pinkston, Quentin VerCetty, Alisha B. Wormsley, Patrick Weems

Opening Performance: Junkanooacome by Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow (Artist). Curated by Arielle Julia Brown (Founder and Director, Black Spatial Relics)

Download the Event Program

SCHEDULE

October 8, 12:00-3:00p EST

Introductions by Paul Farber (Monument Lab) and Johannes Ebert (Goethe-Institut)

Opening Performance: Junkanooacome by Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow (Artist).  Curated by Arielle Julia Brown (Founder and Director, Black Spatial Relics)

12:15-1:30pm EST

Curating Memory and Justice

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (Founder and Artistic Director, SAVVY Contemporary) and Jasmine Wahi (Holly Block Social Justice Curator, Bronx Museum)

Moderated by Patricia Eunji Kim (Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow and Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow, New York University; Assistant Curator, Monument Lab)

1:30-1:45pm EST

Video Presentations from the 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellows

1:45-3:00pm EST

Art, Activism, and Shaping the Public Sphere

Paul Ramírez Jonas (Artist; Professor, Hunter College) and Cannupa Hanska Luger (Artist)

Moderated by Michelle Angela Ortiz (Artist)

 

October 9, 12:00-3:00p EST

Introductions by Stephan Nicoleau (Fullcycle) and Thomas Krüger (bpb)

12:15-1:30pm EST

Memory, Trauma, and Transformation

Daniela Schiller (Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine) and Mabel Wilson (Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University)

Moderated by Sue Mobley (Senior Research Scholar, Monument Lab)

1:30-1:45pm EST

Video Presentations from the 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellows

1:45-3:00pm EST

Confronting Art and History

Seph Rodney (Senior Editor at Hyperallergic) and Mirjam Zadoff (Director, Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism)

Moderated by Ken Lum (Curatorial Advisor and Co-Founder, Monument Lab)

 

About Shaping the Past:

Shaping the Past is a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb) that addresses pressing issues around what, whom, and how to remember in public spaces. The project facilitates a transnational exchange program bringing artists and activists together in dialogue to highlight ongoing critical memory interventions in sites and spaces in North America and Germany. Shaping the Past supports civic practitioners, artists, and activists who critically reimagine monuments and emerges from the ongoing Monument Lab Fellows program. These collaborations and conversations offer innovative models for how we might memorialize the past, create dialogue, and strengthen democracy through public spaces across the globe.

The collaborative initiative consists of three landmark elements: a major public conference that will take place during Monument Lab’s annual Town Hall (October 8-9, 2020); a multi-site exhibition curated by Monument Lab and presented by Goethe-Institut North America and bpb with local programming organized by Goethe-Instituts throughout North America (2021); and a multilingual book that documents the transnational conversations around public memory as envisioned by the artists, activists, and their collaborators, co-edited by Monument Lab’s Paul M. Farber and Patricia Eunji Kim.

Partners: Monument Lab, Goethe-Institut, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education), Slought, the Institute for Contemporary Art – Philadelphia, and 1014 - Space for Ideas.

Supporters: The Surdna Foundation and the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.

Design: Studio Aorta

Videography: Sosena Solomon