Hello readers,

This week in ASTU 100A we discussed the evolution of memorials and monuments over time in order to contextualize how 9/11 was memorialized at Ground Zero and, more abstractly, how the people lost in the attacks were memorialized through works of poetry. Dr. Luger – my ASTU 100A professor – took the class through a sketch of the different waves of memorialization: from the upright 19th century pedestal-style monuments dedicated to war heroes, to the post-WWI memorials which “democratized” monuments by moving from commemorating the singular to commemorating the elusive collective (the “unknown solider”), to the rejection of the upright, overtly nationalistic monument in favour of the conceptual, architecturally diverse and perhaps even critically minded contemporary monument. In regards to the latter, Dr. Luger pointed to Maya Lin’s 1982 tribute to the Vietnam War, which descends horizontally and includes the names of every American life lost in the war on a reflective, black surface – a conceptual choice that has been suggested to gesture towards a sense of American grief and perhaps even shame.

The reason I have briefly summarized our class lecture on monuments is that although I am no expert on monuments and memorialization, from my own experience I wonder if there is yet another category of monument that can be added to this list, what I will refer to as the “counter-monument” (a term that I have heard used in reference to contemporary art). This is what I see as a monument that is not only self-reflexive of the cause it serves to commemorate (such as what has been suggested about Lin’s Vietnam memorial) but which also appropriates the monument as a form/ genre/ structure to paradoxically critique the political and nationalistic implications implicit in the erection of monuments. On this latter note, the geographers Peter Meusburger, Michael Heffernan and Edgar Wunder argue that “Throughout the world, monuments… act as mnemonic devices; as the storage vessels of cultural identity and information; as educational and other communications media; as triggers for sensations, emotions, and sensibilities” and further argue that because of their role as spatial sites of collective remembrance – sites of genesis for national identity – that monuments are always saturated with political motives and movements (8). Thus counter to the patriotic monument, I argue that the “counter-monument” works to subvert the established national memory, and rebel against the patrons of traditional monuments who try to shape the national memory to work in their own interests.

On this note, I would like to talk about one specific “counter-monument” that I was fortunate enough to see exhibited at the Venice Biennale (sometimes referred to as “the art Olympics”) this past summer. The work I am referring to is RAQS Media Collective’s (a New Delhi based art collective) “Coronation Park”, a row of enormous 19th century-style monuments which I saw exhibited along a tree-lined, pedestrian mall in a typical European fashion. Colossal and resting on black pedestals with granite inscriptions, these towering white statues depicting the coronation of British monarchs at the time of Indian colonization, rose into the air, frozen in their triumph, and represented power, strength, heroism and conquest – the markers of a traditional monument.

However, upon closer inspection, it became clear that there was something askew about these monuments. Each of the figures had something missing from their bodies – a torso, a head, a face etc. In regards to this manipulation of the figure’s bodies, a RAQS Media Collective member explained in a Biennale interview that “power’s self image may be that its always very complete… but when ever we ask questions we can see that it is always both being eroded and simultaneously trying to build itself up” and therefore that the missing body parts were symbolic of the vulnerability felt (but often concealed) by great powers. Further deflecting from the typical monument structure, the inscriptions on the monuments’ pedestals did not describe the coronation taking place but rather were inscribed with quotes from George Orwell’s famous essay “Shooting an Elephant”. This allegorical essay tells Orwell’s experience of being positioned in a colonial position in Burma, and is Orwell’s “meditation on the inner life of power, its own doubt and its own sense of its own futility” as a RAQS Media Collective member explained.

Thus, it is apparent that the RAQS Media Collective “monuments” were far from being nationalistic markers of success, conquest and stability, but were rather what I have been calling “counter-monuments”. These sculptures used the form of the stable, erect, hierarchal monument to paradoxically speak of the instability and fragility of the imperial powers who were the very patrons of such traditional monuments. Returning to the geographers Meusburger, Heffernan and Wunder’s work, the artists used the idea of a monument as a manifestation of imperial power – as a site intended to generate patriotism and loyalty – and subverted it by manipulating the monuments’ form to commemorate the dissolution of power rather than the attainment of it, the instability of colonialism, and what the RAQS Media Collective called the “inevitability of abdication”.

Again, speaking merely from my own reflections and without intending in any way to undermine the importance of providing a site for public grieving and commemoration for the victims of 9/11, perhaps this critical lens of the “counter-monument” regarding the meaning behind the erection of monuments should be applied when thinking of the ramifications of 9/11 memorialization. Although Ground Zero is a conceptual, contemporary monument that is seemingly very distant from the 19th century, nationalistic, coronation-style, upright monument, in what ways does it still work to build a controlled sense of national identity and memory? Furthermore, it seems that one could draw some connection between the 9/11 attacks (and the ensuing conflicts and militarization of the U.S.) and the themes regarding the instability of hegemony and imperialism that are encapsulated by “Coronation Park”. In what ways can the trauma of 9/11 and the trauma felt by all sides of the War on Terror be understood using RAQS Media Collective’s understanding of the “inevitability of abdication” that comes alongside imperialism and hegemony? Is the way that 9/11 has been remembered as a decisive moment signalling the vulnerability of the U.S. evidence that there is fragility in all great power, even American? I am not sure I know the answers to my own inquiries, yet something about the RAQS Media Collective counter-monument has continually resurfaced in my memory as we have been working on this 9/11 focused unit, and I anticipate it will continue to do so as we carry on into discussing the War on Terror in ASTU 100A.

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Meusburger, Peter, Michael Heffernan, and Edgar Wunder. Introduction. Cultural Memories: The Geographical Point of View. Ed. Peter Meusburger, Michael Heffernan, and Edgar Wunder. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. 3-14. SpringerLink. Web. 25 October 2015.