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Toppling Things as Memorial Contestation
Spectacle and Affect of Monument Removal
Series: - Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race, Volume: 35
Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, monuments became a focal point: protestors toppled or spray-painted them, even danced on them. These politically, visually, and emotionally potent events may have looked instantaneous, yet frequently sprang from years of activism, as well as protracted political and academic debate. Toppling Things challenges stereotypical notions monument topplings as riotous, spontaneous, or irrational. Bringing together the ideas and emotions, the uncertainty and convictions, of artists, activists, and academics, the volume rejects a neatly tied-up, distant narrative. As it sheds light on the global, personal, immediate, and historical processes around the fall of a monument, the volume engages directly with the complexity of toppling activism and monument removal as a form of lived experience.
Tomas Macsotay is a Senior Lecturer at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, holding a PhD on eighteenth-century sculpture (Amsterdam, 2008). His six books and edited collections include, The Hurt(ful) Body. Performing and Beholding Pain (2017) and Recepción de Richard Wagner y Vanguardia en las Artes Españolas (2024).
NausikaaÌ El-Mecky is tenure-track professor in Art History & Visual Culture at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Since her PhD (Cambridge 2013) she has been developing her self-defined field of âdangerous images,â e.g., in the monograph The Creation of Dangerous Images in Iconoclasm, (Routledge, forthcoming).
NausikaaÌ El-Mecky is tenure-track professor in Art History & Visual Culture at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Since her PhD (Cambridge 2013) she has been developing her self-defined field of âdangerous images,â e.g., in the monograph The Creation of Dangerous Images in Iconoclasm, (Routledge, forthcoming).
Thamyris Mission Statement
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Introduction
âTomas Macsotay and Nausikaä El-Mecky
1 Local Origins of a Global Series: the 1990s Wave of Anti-colonial Iconoclasm
âNikolas Orr
2 Commemoration and (Re)Conciliation: Memorial Culture under Apologetic Settler Colonialism in Canada
âSeraphine Appel
3 Contemporary Iconoclasm and Affect
âErnst van Alphen
4 Traumatic Monuments: Decolonial Iconoclasms and âSouthernâ Memories
âRhea Dehn Tutosaus and Miriam Oesterreich
5 To Remove, or Not To Remove, That Is the Question: the Troubled Legacy of Chiang Kai-shek Statues and Memorials in Democratized Taiwan
âDominic Meng-Hsuan Yang
6 A Space of Freedom: Richmondâs Robert E. Lee Memorial and the Future of America
âDavid Ehrenpreis
7 Conversations on Black Lives Matter
âTami Sawyer with Stacy Boldrick; Keith Magee with Richard Clay
8 Activist Statement: Down with J. P. Coen
âRomy Rondeltap
9 Colonial Reckoning: Reexamining the Slave Past in Catalonia
âGerard Llorens Decesaris and Adrià EnrÃquez Ãlvaro
10 Dissolution of the Monuments
âPaul Grace
11 The Agency of the Void: When a Monument Falls, Absence Transforms into Powerful Presence
âNausikaä El-Mecky
12 Toppling Things: Artistic Approaches and Media Strategies in Dealing with MonumentsâAlexandra Pirici, Morehshin Allahyari, Julius von Bismarck & Julian Charrière
âUrsula Ströbele
13 Taking a Knee: Permanence, Ritual and the Respect Insurrection
âTomas Macsotay
14 Artist/Activist Statement: In Search of an Aesthetic of Care: Recording BLM Protests and Documenting Oneâs Life in a Time of Reckoning
âRuth Somalo
15 Flesh & Stone: Archives, Bodies and âDeep Timeâ in Ada Pinkstonâs LandMarked
âCory Wayman
16 Empty Pedestals or The Aesthetics of Truth
âAda Pinkston
17 Artist Statement: On Disgraced Monuments, their Resignification and the Recovery of Emptied Sites
âKrzysztof Wodiczko
18 Epilogue: 2020 Revisited
âTomas Macsotay and Nausikaä El-Mecky
Index
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Introduction
âTomas Macsotay and Nausikaä El-Mecky
PART 1: Overhauling: an Anatomy of Memorial Contestations
1 Local Origins of a Global Series: the 1990s Wave of Anti-colonial Iconoclasm
âNikolas Orr
2 Commemoration and (Re)Conciliation: Memorial Culture under Apologetic Settler Colonialism in Canada
âSeraphine Appel
3 Contemporary Iconoclasm and Affect
âErnst van Alphen
4 Traumatic Monuments: Decolonial Iconoclasms and âSouthernâ Memories
âRhea Dehn Tutosaus and Miriam Oesterreich
5 To Remove, or Not To Remove, That Is the Question: the Troubled Legacy of Chiang Kai-shek Statues and Memorials in Democratized Taiwan
âDominic Meng-Hsuan Yang
PART 2: Facing: Making a Difference in Memorial Activism
6 A Space of Freedom: Richmondâs Robert E. Lee Memorial and the Future of America
âDavid Ehrenpreis
7 Conversations on Black Lives Matter
âTami Sawyer with Stacy Boldrick; Keith Magee with Richard Clay
8 Activist Statement: Down with J. P. Coen
âRomy Rondeltap
9 Colonial Reckoning: Reexamining the Slave Past in Catalonia
âGerard Llorens Decesaris and Adrià EnrÃquez Ãlvaro
PART 3: Waking: Imaginings of a Post-Monument
10 Dissolution of the Monuments
âPaul Grace
11 The Agency of the Void: When a Monument Falls, Absence Transforms into Powerful Presence
âNausikaä El-Mecky
12 Toppling Things: Artistic Approaches and Media Strategies in Dealing with MonumentsâAlexandra Pirici, Morehshin Allahyari, Julius von Bismarck & Julian Charrière
âUrsula Ströbele
13 Taking a Knee: Permanence, Ritual and the Respect Insurrection
âTomas Macsotay
14 Artist/Activist Statement: In Search of an Aesthetic of Care: Recording BLM Protests and Documenting Oneâs Life in a Time of Reckoning
âRuth Somalo
PART 4: Prolonged Engagements: Artistic Testimonies
15 Flesh & Stone: Archives, Bodies and âDeep Timeâ in Ada Pinkstonâs LandMarked
âCory Wayman
16 Empty Pedestals or The Aesthetics of Truth
âAda Pinkston
17 Artist Statement: On Disgraced Monuments, their Resignification and the Recovery of Emptied Sites
âKrzysztof Wodiczko
18 Epilogue: 2020 Revisited
âTomas Macsotay and Nausikaä El-Mecky
Index
The book is addressed to students and scholars who work at the intersection of art, society, monuments, history and public space, including the fields of art history, public space studies, monument studies, (post)colonial theory and history, history of emotions and affect theory, cultural anthropology and performance studies. Furthermore, the volume is of interest to activists and artists whose interests intersect with these areas.