#hacking monuments

DANTE ALIGHIERI

“Momentary Monument III” by Lara Favaretto

approx 36.000 sandbags, scaffolding // 450 x 2600 x 2600 cm

Installation view at Piazza Dante, Trento, Italy ‘CIVICA 1989 – 2009, Celebration, Institution, Critique’, Fondazione Galleria Civica di Trento, 2010

“Momentary Monument II (The Wall) – commissioned in 2009 by Trento’s Galleria Civica on the occasion of a survey show to mark the museum’s 20th anniversary – made headlines and stirred up a huge political controversy surrounding the value, costs and failures of contemporary art. While it was still under construction, one side of the 36,000 sand-bag ‘fortification’ that Favaretto was creating around the city’s monument to Dante Alighieri, collapsed under its own weight. The statue already had a conflicted history: unveiled in 1896, when Italian-speaking Trento was still under Habsburg rule, the monument was funded by public subscription, with the aim of celebrating Italian culture, language and identity, in a provocative response to the creation in 1889 of a statue of the medieval poet Walther von der Vogelweide in the main square of the nearby German-speaking town of Bozen/Bolzano. Favaretto’s original intention with Momentary Monument III (The Wall) had been ‘to create a space of perplexity, a temporal puzzle’, but she later declared that it was only through the work collapsing and becoming the subject of public criticism, rather than merely evoking a state of entrenchment, that it found its real urgency and significance.”

Hacking Monuments. Tips to make sense of them.

Feb 14th screening at Milchhoff in Berlin curated by EX-VOTO [Radical Pubblic Culture] in collaboration with Visualcontainer and promoted by Peninsula.

Notturno senza Luna

on Galeazzo Monument and on Unknown Soldier Monument

by Nico Angiuli

"Moonless Night" is a work developed by Nico Angiuli during his residency at Casa di BelMondo in Belmonte Calabro.

During his stay, the artist conducted archival research and involved the local community in an investigation into public monuments and the memory of Calabrian women who were victims of patriarchal or mafia violence.

'For anyone who isn’t aware – the statue out the front has had a cone on its head continuously for the past 40 odd years. Despite the best efforts of the council and the police, every time one is removed another takes its place.' - Banksy, June 2023

The history of a talking monument. The following text is from the wikipedia page about the statue.

The equestrian statue of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington located outside the Royal Exchange, now known as the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland, is one of Glasgow's most iconic landmarks.

The statue of the Duke on his favourite horse Copenhagen was sculpted by Italian artist Carlo Marochetti and erected in 1844. The statue is a Category-A listed monument.

In recent times the statue has become known for being capped with a traffic cone.[2] Adorning the statue with a cone had continued over many years: the act was claimed to represent the humour of the local population and was believed to date back to at least the 1980s.[3][4][5][6]

In 2005, Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde Police took a stance of asking the public not to replace the cone, citing minor damage to the statue and the potential for injury when attempting to place a cone.[4][5]

In 2011 the Lonely Planet guide included the statue in its list of the "top 10 most bizarre monuments on Earth".

In 2013 Glasgow City Council put forward plans for a £65,000 restoration project, that included a proposal to double the height of its plinth and raise it to more than six feet (1.8 metres) in height to "deter all but the most determined of vandals".[8] Their planning application contained an estimate that the cost of removing traffic cones from the statue was £100 per callout, and that this could amount to £10,000 a year. The plans were withdrawn after widespread public opposition, including an online petition that received over 10,000 signatures. As the council indicated that action against the practice could still be considered, the art-political organization National Collective organised a rally in defence of the cone.

In 2014, in support of the Scottish Independence referendum, the statue was fitted with a "Yes" cone as well as a flag fitted in the statue's stirrup

The cone was replaced with a gold painted one during the 2012 Olympics as a celebration of Scotland's contribution to the record haul of gold medals won by Team GB. A replica of the statue, complete with cone, appeared at the 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, and a gold cone was then again placed on the statue to mark the success of the games.

In 2015, Glasgow City Council tested hi-tech CCTV software worth £1.2m, checking to see whether it could automatically detect people putting cones on the statue, which it could.

On Brexit Day (31 January 2020) pro-European supporters placed a cone painted to represent the EU flag on the statue's head.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the statue was adorned with a cone and a blue surgical mask around the statue's ears to reflect the pandemic and lockdowns in the country.

In March 2022, in support of Ukraine and as a protest against Russia's invasion of it, the statue was fitted with a cone with the colours of the Ukrainian flag.