Video-art window screening

The tra­di­tion­al rela­tion­ship between art and mem­o­ry has his­tor­i­cal­ly been linked to the prac­tice of erect­ing mon­u­ments to con­form spe­cif­ic nar­ra­tives and mean­ings relat­ed to some­how con­flict­ing or com­plex past events, such as bat­tles and wars. The func­tion of remem­ber­ing was thus del­e­gat­ed in these mon­u­ments –usu­al­ly ver­ti­cal and fig­u­ra­tive–, so that mem­o­ry remained fixed, unchanged. By cre­at­ing these pub­lic spaces for offi­cial mem­o­ry, mon­u­ments prop­a­gat­ed the illu­sion of a shared nar­ra­tive, in which the his­tor­i­cal accounts sanc­tioned by States were pre­sent­ed as nat­u­ral­ly true. How­ev­er, it has become evi­dent that mon­u­ments –like any oth­er cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion– are con­tin­gent sym­bol­ic con­structs deeply ingrained in the polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal, and aes­thet­ic realms. There­fore, espe­cial­ly since the end of the 20th cen­tu­ry, mon­u­ments have more and more become sites where the con­fronta­tion of sym­bol­ic and cul­tur­al con­flicts are unfold­ed. As it has repeat­ed­ly hap­pened through­out his­to­ry, images are nowa­days again in the cen­ter of our cur­rent polit­i­cal, social and cul­tur­al disputes.

This video-art win­dow screen­ing pro­gram aims to dis­play some of the ways how con­tem­po­rary artists have worked around the top­ics of con­flict, mem­o­ry, and cul­tur­al or nat­ur­al her­itage, con­test­ing the offi­cial nar­ra­tives. The notion of counter-mon­u­ment will guide us through their artis­tic strate­gies, for counter-mon­u­ments seek to deny the illu­sion of a per­ma­nent and immutable mem­o­ry and a fixed and unchange­able his­to­ry. These art­works oper­ate as devices for acti­vat­ing mul­ti­ple and diverse mem­o­ries, by propos­ing entan­gled trans­ver­sal links to the events recalled. They oper­ate by bring­ing frag­ments to the fore, by acknowl­edg­ing mem­o­ries as sit­u­at­ed, incom­plete, and deeply sub­jec­tive. Counter-mon­u­ments cel­e­brate their change over time and geog­ra­phy, and seek to stim­u­late mem­o­ry by explic­it­ly point­ing out its inevitable evo­lu­tion through­out his­to­ry. They aim to fos­ter the vis­i­bi­liza­tion of repressed his­to­ries. In this way, the past is con­stant­ly refor­mu­lat­ed in the present, giv­ing rise to dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties for mem­o­ries in a con­tin­u­ous process of con­struc­tion, in order to rethink the unre­solved remains of the past. The artists pre­sent­ed in this pro­gram place his­to­ry and its polit­i­cal con­flicts –unre­solved, only silenced– back in the cen­ter, bring­ing the past to the present in a sort of non-lin­ear con­cep­tion of time as open, mul­ti­ple and, there­fore, linked to the polit­i­cal. Arts have become crit­i­cal sites for alter­na­tive social imaginations. 

Ele­na Rosauro