It is not unthinkable that in a not-too-distant future, citizens of Oslo will have the opportunity to meet for appointments at Salimi Square, to shop for vegetables in Kharian Street, to enjoy their picnics in Rubina Rana Park and to drive to the nearby town of Drammen on Mogadishu Road.
- Thomas Eriksen, social anthropologist (2012)
This section reflects on the process of making the monuments. Following on from the previous one, I am now looking at the key events identified in the stories through the prism of the question of ‘where did it happen’. The location of the story will be treated as if were a sacred, national ‘site’ – A Place Where Something Happened. I reflect on the process of turning each story into monuments and locate how the creative process itself has shaped and shifted my own thinking during the making of the monuments.
In the making of the monuments, what I wish to show/reflect on is my process as a playwright/director. This is not my field or area of expertise, I am working across disciplines and what is important for me is to show the playwright/director’s process in all of it. seeing how I am appropriating things from my field into another and how that is influencing the exploratory process and its results.
Note: I was supposed to document the process of making/installing the monu(mo)ments but the filming was interrupted. This was not something essential, I just wanted to show some behind-the-scenes actions.
Why monuments?
Since my praxis is writing/directing and the PhD project is situated within the theatre department, one of the questions I have been receiving is about the monuments. Perhaps there is a clearer/typical relationship between collecting stories and using them as a basis to make a play, but why are you making monuments as well? I can see why this might not make obvious sense, because the root of this artistic choice is informed by my South African experience of making theatre with the historical baggage I carry while attempting to make the topics I care about palatable to often, a distant white audience.
In South Africa, I am one of the many black artists making what is today informally called ‘serious theatre’ (as opposed to lighter, more entertainment-focused forms of theatre). This refers to people whose work is engaged directly with contemporary socio-political issues. In my experience of doing this kind of work, I have grown accustomed to seeing how some audiences choose not to engage with certain socio-political topics, even when the issue is relevant to them, too. In South Africa, the dominant paying theatregoing audience is still overwhelmingly white. This is not strange given the lack of economic redress that South Africa is yet to undergo, at least successfully. This has created an interesting dynamic: on one hand, you have an emerging post-apartheid black community of artists who are processing the untold pains of colonial and apartheid legacies on a personal and collective level through their work (and for reference, you can put me in this group), and then you have the majority of the white paying audience which has grown tired of this ‘serious theatre’ because it is constantly reminding them of the burdens of our troubled past. In my view, the audience that feels this way turns to avoid most of the ‘serious theatre’ because it is dealing with issues that are seen as ‘other’, it is a problem over there, that has nothing to do with them anymore. As such, when I am making work, it makes the economy of theatre production very difficult to balance when you ignore them, so there’s often a consideration made for how and whether to engage with this audience.
Approaching a topic on a subject matter that focuses on stories that are marginalised in Norway did not inspire me to think this would be a popular topic, my knee jerk reaction was to think of a way to do it that could cast a wider audience reach. Theatre being performed in conventional spaces tends to reach those who have already decided to engage with it, and in most cases, these are already the ‘converted’. But I didn’t want this project to only engage with the ‘converted’. In fact, it is those who would either never go to theatre in general or this kind of theatre specifically that I wanted to reach as well. If they would not come to the theatre, for whatever reason, why not take the theatre to them? This question paved way for taking the stories gathered to the streets. Literally. And with that, the idea of creating monuments that would leave traces of the collected stories was born.
Furthermore, I didn’t just want to make monuments, but I also wanted them to be in public spaces, which was primarily informed by three reasons. Firstly, it was just a practical choice. If the monuments are to function as outlined in the project, they needed to be easily accessible. This is why I asked the narrators, specifically, for events that happened in public spaces, despite its limiting scope (as that is not the most common place where people experience their life changing moments) but since we need to install the monuments where the narrated events took place, it was necessary that they are spaces or sites that we would have unrestricted access to.
Interestingly, asking for people’s intimate life events that happened in the public space meant the events also blur the line between public vs private, and personal vs communal. This has given me a vantage view into how people meet and use public spaces, revealing a fascinating perspective on how they personalize or internalise public events or moments. If we can think of lived experiences as part of the archives that are etched into the physical landscape[1] that they inhabit as they move around, this has come to show the ways in which people embed their own narratives in these places.
Secondly, the decision was influenced by the fact that the third phase, originally intended as the core artistic result, will create a play based on these experiences. However, I still face a challenge with traditional theatre’s audience, which typically consists of people who have already decided to attend. Rather than just appealing to the already converted, I believed this project should also reach those who don’t usually go to the theatre. For this reason, I felt it was especially important to expose this kind of work to those who might typically avoid it. Therefore, how could I make these stories unavoidable for them to engage with? The public space seemed like the most obvious domain to reach them.
Thirdly, theatre is an ephemeral medium. The performance lives and thrives – at best – in the moment. As Simon McBurney said, ‘Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it's gone’. Even if I did the play as a site-sepcific theatre piece to reach a new audience, it would still only be there for a fleeting moment. For this project, it became obvious that I wanted to extend also the life of the stories being shared. If I were to have a chance at making a dent towards addressing this perceived lack of inclusion of diversity in the (permanent) public inscriptions, it was important for my intervention to not physically fade as soon as the curtain call falls. At this stage, monuments with their alluring sense of permanency became a necessary counter-weight to the theatre’s ephemerality. Although I was consciously thinking about how these two – in their own separate ways – could work towards a common goal, it is clear in hindsight to see how this was paving the way for them to intersect/collapse into each other.
To summarise:
1. Theatre can only reach those who have already decided to engage with it, and in most cases, these are already the ‘converted’. But I wanted to also engage also those would either never go to theatre or come to this kind of theatre.
2. This is why the public space becomes so central, and it is also only fair to return the stories where they happened.
3. Theatre is also a short-lived experience or moment, but I wanted to extend that moment, allowing a trace of it to linger long after the theatre was done. Also, I really wanted this project to not only talk about the research question or problem but leave something concrete behind that would in part address it, but also continue to raise the questions, so that we can keep reflecting about who is included/excluded.
I also want to highlight how this reflects why I describe myself as an undiscplined artist. I didn't deliberately try to integrate monuments into my artistic project. Instead, I was mainly addressing a problem in my existing practice where performance as an ephemeral medium couldn't meet the degree of ‘permanency’ I wanted these stories and their representation to enjoy in public discourse and space. Consequently, the monument emerged as a genuine response to something I was exploring in my artistic practice. And in my ‘undisciplined’ nature, if I determine that what I need is not within my discipline, I am not afraid to throw myself into a new territory and be vulnerable to exploring new ideas and concepts in the process of trying to fix something in my own artistic process. As an entry point, it is important that what leads me to other fields is something I'm trying to solve in my own practice.
Framing my approach toward the monuments
When I started the PhD, I had a rather generic idea of what a monument should be in this project. I don’t believe I even attempted to define it to myself. I had a much stronger sense of why I wanted to include it in the project, than a concrete idea of what it could artistically be or mean. Before I conducted interviews with narrators, one of the examples I used to give of a monument revolved around a love story; imagine a couple that meets under a tree on their first date, and then many years when I interview one of them long after their marriage, we go back to that same tree and install an audio file into the trunk of the tree with a story of how they met in that moment. The public must plug in their own headset to hear the story, though. And there’s also a QR code which they can scan to read more about the monument and the larger project.
For many, this line of thinking put my approach in the anti-monumentism or counter-monumentalism tradition, which is a movement in contemporary art and memorial culture that challenges the conventional notions of monuments and memorials. This tradition emphasises creating works that are reflective, interactive, and often critical of traditional monumental forms. This resonated with me but at this stage, I was not as interested in defining or framing what I was doing than to explore where it could take me. But it was useful to note that that’s how some people were reading and characterising this part of the work.
From the onset, one thing was clear: I couldn’t afford to build monuments in bronze or limestone blocks. As such, I wanted to invest in building monuments that relied on a high concept, meaning they would be easily communicable and immediately appealing. This would give them potential to attract a large audience due to their simplicity, originality, and broad appeal. Also, when it came to ideas about their materiality, I was interested in two ideas, 1) Thomas Hirschhorn’s idea of ‘everyday materials’, and 2) found material.[1] Thomas Hirschhorn, a Swiss artist known for his installations and public art projects, is well know for using common ‘everyday materials’ in his work, which is materials like cardboard, aluminum foil, packing tape, and plastic. Among many reasons, he uses them because they are universally familiar and accessible. These materials are often not meant to last forever, emphasising the process of creation and the temporal nature of art. Since I wanted to create permenant monuments, there is a glaring contradiction with Hirschhorn’s everyday materials, something I would have to confront if I follow this line of thinking and practicing.
In terms of found material, I found inspiration from the sculpural works of artists like the Zimbabwean-born Germain Ngoma and South Africa’s Pitika Ntuli for their embracing of recycling as an art medium. I was fascinated by their re-using of material often seen as “worthless”. Part of this fascination may have related to the fact my project is trying to re-centre voices that are marginalised, and thus could also be argued to be seen as “worthless”. My ‘found’ stories + found material became a complementary approach to consider as a way of realising the monuments.
This picture above is from an exhibition entitled “Marikana Hill to Constitution Hill”, which reflects on Ntuli’s artistic response to the Marikana massacre. The figures represent the miners who were killed during the massacre, with the figure in green representing the strike leader Mgcineni Noki, who became the iconic symbol of the worker’s resistance and also known as the Man in the Green Blanket.[1]
As I was also involved with responding to this issue at the time, I went to see this exhibition. It was so simple yet quite poignant and moving. One of its strengths was the choice of location.[1] The choice of venue for this exhibition is also significant. According to the artist’s own website: “The fact that Constitutional Hill is a recycled prison connects very well with Ntuli’s works which are made from recycled material including metal, stone, and bone, and demonstrate a deep concern for the material, social and political environment.”[i] This inspired me to consider how my own monuments could have a meaningful relationship to the sites where they are installed.
I began sourcing reference ideas, mostly prioritising designs that showed how I could use found material that were durable to construct them, but even how I can appropriate or blend them into a site. Here are some references:
[1]The Constitutional Hill used to be a prison, which was at one point referred to as ''The Robben Island of Johannesburg'' because it held figures like your Nelson Mandelas, but today it houses the constitutional court, our highest court in a post-apartheid South Africa. How ironic that the ANC-led government of those who were once imprisoned here are now also responsible for more bloodshed.
During the same period, I also decided to keep a picture book version of what I would like to consider as a sudelbücher,[1] which I used to collect reference pictures that I came across and found interesting as potentially useful for generating ideas of what my monuments could look like. To see more documentation of images from the waste book below:
[1] This is a German term referring to a waste book. “Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German mathematician, physicist and writer and also the German writer Kurt Tucholsky collected aphorisms, observations and ideas in form of a Sudelbuch – texts that were not refined and noted as they came to mind. The term probably stems from business language and describes a notebook in which all the necessary notes on daily business have been collected. The English term for it is “waste book. What a nice contradiction it is to take the trouble of noting something that is considered to be waste in the first place.” (Kai Ziegner, p. 3, 2020).
During this time in my process, I came across these two memorialisations of Terry Fox and Danuta Danielsson (respectively, above) which took my thinking a step further. They were perhaps the most inspiring and influential on my earlier thinking as they illustrated more concretely the kinds of monuments I could create. They provided a snapshot of a moment from someone’s lived story and how it could be translated into a commemoration. In 1977, Terry Fox was diagnosed with bone cancer and had to have his right leg amputated above the knee. Despite this, three years later he began his Marathon of Hope to raise money for cancer research. After 143 days and 5,373 kilometers (3,339 miles), his journey was cut short when his cancer spread to his lungs. A year later, he passed on and never managed to finish the race. Today Terry is celebrated as a national hero. His legacy lives on through the annual Terry Fox Run, which is held worldwide and has raised almost a billion dollars for cancer research.
"The Woman with the Handbag" (1985) is a famous photograph taken by Hans Runesson. The photograph captures a moment during a neo-Nazi rally in Växjö, Sweden, where a woman named Danuta Danielsson, wielding a handbag, strikes a marching neo-Nazi. The image has since become an iconic symbol of resistance against fascism and has been widely circulated and reproduced as a powerful statement against hate and extremism.
In different ways, both these two individual actions – as ‘small’ as they may have seemed at first – went on to stand for something and inspire many around the world. What appealed to me about them was how they show that ordinary people – through their small lived experience – are capable of inspiring and impacting the world around us. But for this to happen, someone has to document such moments and make them visible to us. This potential we have is one of the things that has encouraged me to undertake this research project, my curiosity to explore what and how ordinary stories can speak back to the world surrounding them. Also, they both captured a moment in someone’s life that clearly had a key turning point, which showed what my translation of stories into monuments could look like.
As a sidenote, given their different political currencies, it is also worth noting the different receptions they received. On one hand, Terry’s story went on to enjoy a wider reception. In fact, there has been many memorialisations enacted throughout Canada in his honour. On the other hand, in 2015, a proposal by local artist Susanna Arwin to erect a life-sized statue of Danielsson in Växjö was rejected due to concerns that it might be seen as promoting violence. There were also private objections from Danielsson’s family. In response, people across Sweden began placing handbags on statues in protest. Later in the same year, a hotel entrepreneur Lasse Diding bought the statue and offered it to Varberg municipality, which initially accepted it but then declined it the following year. The statue is now in the garden of Diding's Villa Wäring in Varberg, and a second statue has been unveiled in Alingsås. This demonstrated how ‘easy’ and/or messy/difficult it could be to try to install monuments in public space.
As I was working through my research questions in relation to phase three of the project, it became clear that I was really interested in the artistic question of how to narrate a ‘we’. To include the public in this ‘we’, I also began to develop interest in ways I could activate the audience to be more than just a passive observer. How could the monuments be opened up for them to engage more critically? This question began to lay the foundation of how my idea of a monument came to demand some kind of meaningful interactivity from the public, rather than leaving it as an incidental option.
Notably, the developments across other parts of the research were starting to visibly influence each other. Critical insights, questions and answers that were coming out of one part of the project were now being applied and tested across the board, which started to develop the project in unpredicatable but exciting ways. In a symposium titled: Public Memory – Monuments and Difficult Heritages, one of the contributors, Esther Shalev Gerz (2023), states that “When you do a work of art, what happens in the world right now when you do it, this more or less dictates the work, but you don’t know (it) as an artist”. This couldn’t have been more truer for my process as well not only about what was happening within the research but also the world beyond. When I was in the middle of defining what my monuments should mean, this process was happening during the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in 2020. As part of the demonstrations, we saw a lot of monuments/statues of racists/colonialists being torn down, especially in the UK and USA. This process had already gained traction in South Africa, which, in some ways, had long been one of the countries calling for the removal of colonial legacies. When this movement reignited similar protests and debates in Norway, it also made me reflect on the monuments I wanted to have installed. Since I wanted them to be permanent public inscriptions, what would keep them relevant after this immediate moment in which I am making them has passed? What will keep them up to date with an ever-changing society? Won’t they one day also need to removed?
Parallel to this development, I was also questioning what should be the red thread that runs through the different phases of the project. Through this process, I concluded that if my creative process is characterised by this interactivity/participatory nature between the collaborators and I in shaping the work, shouldn’t I make room for the audience to also play an interactive part that could as well impact the meaning of the work? So, how I could bring the audience into this core fold?
For inspiration, I looked at various practitioners and art movements over the decades that could offer me clues of how to work with public participation/interaction in a meaningful way. In this reflection, I will only focus on a few that had a direct impact on my process, thinking and practice. In this regard, I started with recent and relevant practices of artists closest to me and slowly worked my way back. The obvious starting point was the work of my colleague Dr. Merete Røstad (artist and researcher), who is the co-founder of MemoryWork, which is an interdisciplinary artistic research enquiry into the politics of remembrance and representation. I am member of this research cluster, and it is through it that I came to encounter the work of Merete. In her PhD project, she explores the concept of the "participatory monument" as a dynamic and interactive form of public art that actively involves community members in its creation, maintenance, and interpretation. According to Merete, a participatory monument transcends the traditional static and commemorative nature of monuments by creating ongoing engagement and dialogue among the public. She has set out the following points to clarify this idea. The participatory monument (Røstad, 2018):
· Brings the public into the work, engaging them as participants through interaction with remembrance and forgetting.
· Can include anyone interested and willing as a participant.
· Activates memory and contributes to forming collective memory through participation.
· Is not based on a scripted dialogue and does not direct participants’ behavior or movement.
· Includes participants as witnesses, observers, and contributors.
· Has a framework that is temporary and time-limited in nature focused on critical material and a social situation in the present time.
· Is not defined by or limited to particular media, materials, or technology.
· Gives the artist a role in creating a situation, place, or event that open up an exchange between the narrative material in the work and the participants.
· Requires the artist to be present in the making of the work and to be available at every stage of the process.
Merete’s participatory monument resontated with me, and also gave me a language to think through some aspects of my own ideas about monuments. For instance, I had always thought of the public as observers but never as witnesses. Unlike observers who are usually passive, witnesses are often more active. They not only observe but also may provide an account or testimony of what they have seen or experienced. Additionally, being called to witness implies a certain level of credibility and accountability. I wanted to tease what this notion could mean for me. As I was making monuments that were going to be in public spaces without my physical presence most of the time, I became interested in how I can ask the public to not just be observers, but also witnesses. However, for me to know that they were there, they needed to leave some kind of a recognisable or visible trace on the monument. Unlike a participatory monument, this meant that my witness needs to be given instructions on how to account for their presence, and the provision of their accounts must go beyond the dialogical or cerebral, it must trigger a physical action – that is likely non-spoken – as a form of remembering. The witness must leave a slice of their trace that would let me know that they had been there. But how would that happen, and what is an artistically interesting way to document/archive those traces?
In the process of thinking through this question, I found inspiration from some of the conceptual ideas of the fluxus movement, performance art, happenings, etc. Even though the artistic works tended to lack references that resonated with me, I was still intrigued by how they prioritised live/everyday actions and audience participation in artworks, which allowed an element of chance (in a meaningful way) to shape the end result of the piece. I wanted my witnesses/potential contributors to also have the same (meaningful) chance and sense of responsibility to shape the meaning of the artwork, potentially blurring the distinctions or boundaries between the artist vs public, artwork vs (added) traces.
An artistic practice of one of the artists who is negotiating these boundaries in an interesting way returned me back to Hirschhorn. For instance, his The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival (2009) was a temporary, site-specific art installation and cultural event situated in the Bijlmermeer neighborhood of Amsterdam. The festival was aimed at engaging the local community through the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch thinker. The installation included a variety of structures, including a library, a workshop, and a stage, where residents could participate in philosophical discussions, lectures, and artistic activities.To say this was an ambitious project is an understatement. What shines through for my process is Hirschhorn's commitment to creating socially engaged art that blurs or bridges the gap between high culture and everyday life. This lowers the barriers for communal participation, which makes the work accessible and relevant to a broader audience. Something that is critical when one wants to actively engage the public in the process and production. This work even went on to inspire one of my ideas of the monuments (see the idea for The Queen of Oslo’s house). However, unlike Hirschhorn, my idea had a limited scope and was reconceptualised as a permanent monument.
By now I had figured out a ‘way’ to work collect traces and physically inscribe them into the monument. But since I only had an idea of it, I started looking for artistic practices that were already working with something similar.This returned me to the artistic practice of Esther Shalev-Gerz to see how it could work in practice for the monument to hold or archive the traces that people leave behind. Shalev-Gerz is an artist who is internationally recognised for her seminal contributions to the field of art in the public realm and her consistent investigation into the construction of memory, history, the natural world, democracy and cultural identities. In particular, her collaboration with Jochen Gerz on their pioneering artwork, Monument Against Fascism, which was a 12-meter-tall aluminum pillar that invited the public to inscribe their names or messages against fascism. As it filled up, it was gradually lowered into the ground until it disappeared, symbolising the ongoing struggle against fascism. What I found fascinating about the work is its visceral nature in which the witness is asked to co-sign the monument by physically inscribing their name into its body as a way of leaving a trace, embodying their commitment to stand against fascism. This way of acting upon the monument by adding a trace that grows its meaning with each inscription hits at the core and is illustrative of the ideas I am also teasing.
Ironically, it is also worth noting that this work was an important inspiration for the development of the term ‘counter-monument’, which emerged in postwar West Germany during the 1980s, by making monuments that seeks to disrupt dominant historical narratives, provide a voice for those whose stories have been marginalised or excluded, and enhance awareness and understanding of the historical event that is being commemorated (Stevens, et al., 2018). I guess this is a full circle moment of inspiration.
These coinciding considerations/questions led me to believe that the monuments needed an additional layer of meaning that would constantly keep it growing and learning about the changing world around it. As the monument itself cannot do much once it is installed, my focus became the public and their interaction with them. Simultaneously, I was also wondering about how the monuments could respond to the question of how to narrate a ‘we’/collective voice. When I was presenting the stories collected, one of the metaphors I had developed was of ‘footprints’, to see the stories as little footprints that show us how the narrators were weaving their day to day lives into the fabric of the Norwegian society. But if the narrators could leave these footprints, shouldn’t or wouldn’t those visiting the monuments have their own footprints to also leave behind? How could the monuments make room for the public to do something that could leave a trace on them as well? Wouldn’t that also enable the monuments to move beyond their initial individual stories, and begin to accumulate traces that turn them into a collective voice?
Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle clicked in my head, which helped me to define what a monument should do in this project.
Defining the monument
Even though I started this process with a generic idea of a monument, I eventually came to realise that I was not primarily interested in building structures, buildings, or statues to be looked at, but rather something that the public can meaningfully interact or engage with. Notably, my interest is not really in what the monument is, but what it does. As a result, my idea of a monument needed to do three things, which became requirements or criterion for what would make a monument in this project.
Function 1:
Like any other public memory, the common idea of a monument as a container of a selected narrative, moment or event that is made available for everyone to experience will be integrated into what we are calling monuments as well. That is, at a basic level, each monument will be a container about someone’s story, and the public will be able to access and experience the individual narrative and why it is there.
Function 2:
It is envisaged that the monument will have an interactive element, a specified means for the public to interact with it. The demand for specificity here is crucial. Our interaction(s) with the monument must be an intended function or ambition, not an afterthought or something left to the whims of the public to decide. It must be self-evident in the design how the public are meant to engage with the monument. Of course, the public can always expand the ways they want to engage with the monument beyond the scope of what is provided. This demand is not meant to limit what can be possible, but to delineate what is minimally required.
Function 3:
This interaction or engagement must have a generative function, meaning the act of performing it must produce something else. That is, the engagement must produce ‘traces’ (i.e., a text, an image, a recorded action, etc.) that are either inscribed into the monument itself or create something else of their own. This can happen physically to the monument or digitally on an open-source platform. Fundamentally, the public must also have access to these traces.
Coincidentally, it was at this stage that in the process that I was appointed to join the Editorial Committee of VIS – The Nordic Journal for Artistic Research. Here I met Serge von Arx, (Architect and Professor of Scenography), who is the artistic director of the scenography department of the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NTA). In his own words, his work focuses “on “performative architecture”, the meeting and subsequent amalgamation of theatre and architecture. Von Arx hereby engages scenography as an art field only existing as agency in dialogue with others, mainly taking shape as spatial potentialities.” A conversation between us led to a common interest in his existing practice and my definition and ideas of monuments, we seemed to be interested in creating work that took public interaction beyond the observational or verbal/cerebral engagement. Our work seemed interested in triggering movement as a form of engaging and remembering. To explore this idea, I was invited to work with his students at NTA. It was in the context of this collaboration that I got the chance to test how my definition of a monument could work in practice.
Monuments in Flux & Porous Memorials
After redefining the idea of my monuments, what I really needed to do now before we go into their actual production, was to pilot the idea in order to assess how feasible my thinking and plans were. To this effect, I worked with a colleague, Serge von Arx and his scenography students from the Norwegian Theatre Academy. This provided the perfect opportunity to guide the students through the ideas and see how others would respond to them, especially towards realising them into actual monuments. The school offered me a 2-week workshop, which, in the end, was extended by an additional week. The workshop and the results are described below.
Workshop description
This workshop will be run by Eliot Moleba who is doing his PhD in artistic research at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), and co-tutored by Serge von Arx. The class builds on Eliot's PhD research project "Alternative Histori[es]: A Place Where Something Happened" and on NTA's long term research platform "Our Gruesome Cultural Heritage", focusing on acts of commemoration in the public space to create awareness and trigger debate. The two weeks inquiry in Fredrikstad is based on Eliot's artistic approach which he describes as "exploring narrative accounts of Norwegians who self-identify with an ‘immigration background’, to collect stories of their lived experiences, with special interest in an event that happened in a public space and was experienced as a life changing moment. The stories are to be used to produce monuments that will be installed on the sites or locations where the narrated events took place. The monuments will take over the public spaces and infuse them with gripping personal narratives to shift how we read and interact with those places and (re)negotiate their past/meaning, generating a ‘capital’ that will propose a ‘new’ way of relating to, and/or understanding the place, its people and history. This is to create an ‘alternative history’, dedicated to writing and inscribing these voices into public spaces and our broader collective imagination." The term monument hereby is critically examined within in socio-cultural context, similar to the notion memorial in "Our Gruesome Cultural Heritage" and may rather operate as a subversive tool of communication.
The students will first discuss the topic, its context and what is at stake, socially, politically, and culturally, and subsequently develop and test simple interventions/intrusions in the public space in Fredrikstad which trigger movement as a form of remembering. Scenographic actions, like chalk writing in the streets, ephemeral materialized statements, etc. will be inserted into the public space. Their goal is to evoke distinct movement of the citizens and visitors of Fredrikstad, consciously or unconsciously, and thereby initiate a debate which emerges abstractly in the shape of movement, rather than verbally. How can a monument/memorial be abstract and still punctuate the spatial silence in the urban environment?
Process
Given that the school is based in Fredrikstad, whatever we did needed to take place there as well. And since my project is about responding to the stories that happened in a particular place, it became obvious that we couldn’t make the students work on the stories that I had collected as none of them had taken place in Fredrikstad. That meant we had to find new stories that were rooted in the city. The students were tasked with finding a suitable candidate that they could interview, write a short summary of the story, identify the main event they want to make a monument in response to, and then the execution. It proved to be too ambitious to try to do so much in 2 weeks.
In hindsight, I had not realised that so much of this process was well-adapted to my own strengths. It’s not everyone who feels comfortable interviewing people. The students needed more training when it came to interview skills. Still, as this workshop was intended to be a pilot to develop the monuments from idea to execution, the process and results were a success as it demonstrated both the strength and weaknesses in my thinking/plan.
Results
In the workshop, the students had to find a subject of interest to interview about an event that was central to their lives or had a big impact on them that happened in a public space, write a short story about the event, and then create a monument to commemorate that person’s narrated event. The workshop culminated in the creation of five monuments. Here’s a snippet of one of the monuments and a brief description of the story that inspired it.
The Fredrikstad Guestbook
This monu(mo)ment was based on the story of a young man who had attributed leaving the city of Fredrikstad as a life changing event. Even though his childhood and life was generally good, he felt like the city was relatively small and was curious about the world beyond its borders. This is a common trend in Fredrikstad, young people often leave, like in many other countries, for the bigger cities.
To commemorate his story, a monu(mo)ment titled, Fredrikstad Guestbook, was created and placed at the main train station, for him to reflect on the experiences of his stay(s) in the city, but also as an open invitation for others to do the same.
Thus, a big book was placed on a stand, with a pen tied to a string, for people to reflect on their encounters with the city. For people who wanted to leave a message not just in the guestbook for the general public to read, but for a specific person in (or outside) the city, the monument included the possibility for people to write on a page, rip it out of the book or tear a section of the page, put it inside an envelope that was provided, write an address of the recipient and then put it in a letter box. The students would then bring stamps and post the letters on their behalf. After only a weekend at the station, the monument had garnered many entries from the public, including letters which were later posted to the provided addresses.
Afterthoughts on the collaboration:
The collaboration with the students and Serge von Arx would have a tremendous impact on my project, as this became the first real tangible experiment with my own ideas of what a monument could be. I was particularly thankful to the students for throwing themselves into this artistic mind-field and exploring this way of monumenting. From this experience, I am starting to realise that perhaps I am teetering on creating a unique technique of approaching and making monuments.
My work with Serge through the VIS editorial committee would also continue to deepen the collaboration, shaping the development of this project. We went on to co-edit two issues for VIS:
· VIS Issue 9 was released 14 March 2023. The Issue features seven expositions within the theme “Of Memory and Public Space”. Editors: Serge von Arx and Eliot Moleba.
https://www.en.visjournal.nu/journal/88
· VIS Issue 8 was released 18 November 2022. The Issue features seven expositions within the theme “of Rules and Alternatives”. Editors: Serge von Arx and Eliot Moleba.
https://www.en.visjournal.nu/journal/5
We used both our practices to frame the calls, inviting other artistic researchers to join our dialogue, mapped across various artistic practices, attempting to grapple with what it means to trigger an action or movement as a form of remembering and responding.
Applying the concept of the monument to practice
When I went into this pilot process, what I was particularly interested to see was how the students could make the interactive elements with the public meaningful, and additionally, how the traces produced from the encounters becomes a visible part of the monument going forward – digitally or physically. It was not enough that people interacted with the work, even more important to me is that other people coming to engage with the work later could access the traces left behind. Even though all the monuments students created were interactive, it was clear that four of them did not manage to take that interactivity into the additional level of collected traces that went on to become a part of the monument itself. After supporting them for several weeks, I came to realise – firsthand – how difficult it is to do it without being artificial or contrived about it.
Thankfully, one of them managed to do this. I will now discuss what the students did to show how these functionalities came together in their artistic result. Let’s consider an example from a pilot project we ran with the scenography department at the Norwegian Theatre Academy in Fredrikstad, where we worked with a group of final year students on a 3-week workshop to create monuments. The students had to find a subject of interest to interview about an event that was central to their lives or had a big impact that happened in a public space, write a short story about that person’s life, and then create a monument to commemorate that person’s narrated event. One of the monuments that were created, was based on the story of a young man who had attributed leaving the city of Fredrikstad as a life changing event. Even though their childhood and life was generally good, the city is relatively small and they wanted to be exposed to more opportunities and diversity. This is a common trend in Fredrikstad, young people often leave, like in many other countries, to the bigger cities.
So, to commemorate this story, the student created a monument titled, The Fredrikstad Guestbook, which was placed at the main train station, for the interviewee to reflect on his experiences of his stay(s) in the city, but also as an invitation for others to do the same. Thus, a big book was placed on a stand, with a pen tied to a string, for people to document their reflections of encounters with the city. For people who wanted to leave a message not just in the guestbook for the general public to read, but to a specific person in or outside the city, the monument included the possibility for people to write on a page, rip it out of the book or tear a section of the page, put it inside an envelope that was provided, write an address of the recipient and then put it in a letter box. The students would then bring stamps and post the letters on their behalf. After only a weekend at the station, the monument had garnered many entries by the public, while some were serious and others were superficial, including several letters which were later posted to the registered addresses.
What is important to note in this example is how it satisfies the criteria set out. Firstly, it was possible to just read this as a commemoration of a certain individual’s story, their journey, and reflections of the city. Secondly, it provided a specific way the public could engage with it i.e., to write their own reflections of the city. Third and last, those reflections generated texts that left traces of their own journeys, capturing, and sharing a slice of their lives. The monument, then, is not something static but an event or a moment that is continually growing and expanding with every visit and trace that we leave behind. This defines what is referred to as a monument in this project.
Even though it is part of the definition and something I have planned for it to happen, I was quite taken when I saw the texts that were generated by the guestbook. For the first time, this wasn’t an idea but a reality. When you are imagining something, sometimes you gloss over certain aspects of it – but seeing the written accounts something finally hit me, this action is doing more than just interaction, it is also producing stuff. It is generating new content and experiences. Assuming that different monuments would create different stuff to this one, I began to wonder about this generative capacity they have… irrespective of what is produced, what do I call this quality itself? Is there an existing concept or do I need to invent one?
From Monument to Monu(mo)ment
After the successful pilot project, picking up from my curiosity of what to call the generative capacity, I began a reflective practice/process to examine what this conceptualisation of my monuments could means in relation to existing concepts, practices, and movements of working with monuments. Through this process, I became interested in the disjuncture of what my monument is doing versus what is regarded as a typical monument. Commonly, a monument is a structure or site created to commemorate a person, event, or significant historical or cultural achievement. Central to this definition, is that a monument is created to explicitly celebrate a specific event/moment, which, once defined, is generally set. Our interpretations of the monument can fluctuate over time, but the meaning contained in the monument largely remains stable. Yet, this definition seems to differ quite significantly to my idea of a monument. The departure point is largely because a monument is generally focused on memorialising a defined story or moment of one or several individuals as a final outcome. But what is clear from my conception of a monument is that it uses the defined event or moment being memorialised as a starting point to invite others to leave traces or moments. In other words, it starts where a typical monument usually ends. Thus, a monument to me is not stable but something that is porous and expands beyond the initial story it is based on. As it invites its visitors to contribute their own stories, perspectives, or reflections, it’s meaning(s) evolves – by design – to hold the traces others bring to it.
As a result, to allude or make these nuances perceptible, I am redefining what I am doing not as a monument, but a monu(mo)ment. That is, a monu(mo)ment is a type of structure that is erected in memory of a person, event, etc. which takes the celebrated occasion or moment as a basis to invite others to engage and evolve over time. It does this through a design that takes the public not just as passive observers, but active participants who can engage with it in a meaningful and interactive way. This makes it a multidirectional moment or event, continually growing and expanding with every visit and trace left behind.
Within this project and beyond, I am interested to see how the monu(mo)ments and their multidirectional nature will redefine the relationship or boundaries between the artist vs public, artwork vs traces. This is something that needed a much deeper and critical reflections once the monu(mo)ments are installed and begin to generate a life of their own.
Translating the stories into monu(mo)ments
One thing that the workshop with the NTA scenography students had revealed was that it is difficult to translate the stories into a monu(mo)ment. Previously, when I started the process, I had also struggled with this, but I thought it mostly had to do with the fact that I was working across a different medium/field, so I was not able to find my grip on the translation of the stories faster. So, on one level, it was quite reliving to see scenographers struggling with the process because it spoke to how difficult this was in general.
This led me to go back and reflect on the ideas of monu(mo)ments I had already developed to analyse how those came about and what made them seem interesting and strong to me. It was important to do this reflective practice/analysis[1] because I could critically examine my own creative process and outcomes to gain insights into my methods, techniques, and artistic choices. I wanted to probe if there was a common denominator between them that could give me some clues about what makes them work. Perhaps if I know this information, it could help me understand what I need to be looking for.
In hindsight, the challenge was that I started with this idea of trying to be ‘objective’ – to represent the stories in a way that would somehow be self-evident. That we could all agree was a fair portrait of the story. I came to realise that when I was trying to think of an idea for a monument that would fit the whole story, it became very difficult to do that level of synthesis. This was probably motivated by the fact that I knew others were going to read the stories and judge how I had translated them into monu(mo)ments, and somehow, I wanted to create monu(mo)ments we could all agree were the most appropriate. I came to react to the stories based on what I thought would be agreeable rather than what felt right to me, which made this process difficult. The easier route was to embrace my subjectivity, to look at how each story touched me as an individual. This required trust that what could touch me can later be translated to others. I can do a lot with what I actually feel than what I imagine others might feel. This prompted to look for what is it that I respond to the most in the story. Finding that essence for myself was the beginning of cracking the code to developing an idea of transferring that to an audience.
This was a case of “you have to feel it yourself before you can make others feel it” which speaks to the importance of genuine personal experience and authenticity in creating meaningful connections and impacts. Especially in artmaking, truly understanding and experiencing something yourself can allow you to convey it with sincerity and depth, which in turn resonates more powerfully with others.
When I went back to run the analysis of the other ideas, this led me to discover a four-part process that was involved in the translation process.
Impression/Resonance:
Finding a moment(s) that resonates or speaks to me on a deeper level (emotionally or intellectually, or both). It is important that this is a genuine connection that is felt in relation to the story (in whole or part). It can help to identify a central part of the story that feels representative of the whole.
Essence:
To find the essence, that connection needs to be distilled further. Why does that moment speak to me? What is the (human) connection? What is the underlying ‘thing’ or ‘essence’ that makes it relevant to me? (It is understanding why this has a strong impact on me that will help me to relate it to others).
Action:
How can I turn the ‘essence’ or ‘thing’ into a concrete action? The idea must be driven by an action. It is important to make the action as simple as possible. (If the action is too convoluted, reconsider the action or idea).
Abstraction:
Transferring or abstracting the action into something that connects it to a broader, relatable
theme. Here, we are shifting from the specificity of the given story to a broader abstraction that allows people to bring their own related ‘things’ or moments to the action. You don’t want the public to relate to the monu(mo)ment only from the perspective of the narrator, you want to create an abstraction that broadens the scope of participation by allowing them to bring something of themselves that is related to the narrator’s story to the monu(mo)ment as well.
By synthesising these four elements, I had tools that could help me think through the creative process, which made it a little easier to brainstorm ideas for new monu(mo)ments. Now I was no longer just working from the creative muscle or intuition alone, I actually had an idea of what to look for, and what to ask myself to approach or think about this process from multiple entry points.
What I also found interesting was how this process became multidirectional. That is, it didn’t really matter which of the four elements came first, you can work it back and forth to find the others as well. What is important is to crack one of them.
Overall, being reflective about my processes as I engage in them has really been helpful to make explicit the implicit knowledge that informs how I have been working with this, which has contributed to my own development, artistic process, and practice.
The making of monu(mo)ments
Now that I had some understanding of my own process, it was a lot easier to approach my ideas of the monu(mo)ments and even helped me to refine the existing ones. In this section, I will reflect on the process of making three monu(mo)ments, which make up the core of my artistic results related to this phase. I will talk about what I found interesting about the stories and how I used that towards generating ideas for their monu(mo)menting. I will look at three monu(mo)ments which make up my artistic results from this phase: Rico on the Run (2.0), In Her Shoes, and Kjersti’s Line.
The approach to making the monu(mo)ments was that I developed the concepts and wrote a brief of what I wanted. This was given to an artist (Jad), who then developed the concept into an artistic design. This was done in close collaboration and discussion.
In this reflection, I will only speak to how I generated the concepts, not the physical construction of the monu(mo)ments. Even though I was in dialogue with the collaborating artists, they were placed in change of realising the design and construction.
Once I had developed the concepts, I pitched them to their respective narrators for feedback. It is useful that they were excited about our plans and looking forward to seeing the artistic outcomes. The narrators were also involved in the writing of the descriptions of the monu(mo)ments. It was important to ensure that they were a part of how I was framing them to the general public – seeing as this will be their public life. All narrators were offered another opportunity to reconsider making their names public as part of the monu(mo)ments and have all consented to have them displayed. This is why you will see them named in this reflection document as well.
I will also reflect on the process of getting permits for the monu(mo)ments, which was much lengthier than I thought. A general note about the period. Initially my plan was to ask to have all the monu(mo)ments installed as permanent public inscriptions. However, after it became clear that that ask would likely take years to get through the system, I unwillingly had to settle for a language of ‘long-term’ – indicating that we would like to have it for as long as it was possible.
Before the interview process, all the narrators were asked to identify a key moment that happened in a specific site. Following that, during the interview, they were encouraged to say which site they felt was appropriate for their story. Some stories had a clear site but others were either based on an event that unfolded at different sites or multiple events that happened at multiple sites. In such cases, the narrators were asked to choose which one should be the focal point. Often times, the narrators delegated that choice to me.
(To read the stories of the narrators, click here)
1. In Her Shoes
Narrator: Camille Oneida
Description of location: Lambertseter fritidsklubb (outside the building)
Address: Langbølgen 2A, 1154 Oslo
Concept: Eliot Moleba
Photos: Ric Francis
Artist/Construction: Alf Ollett
Producer: Transcultural Arts Production. Funded with support from KORO’s The Local Communities Programme.
Site inspection:
The dance studio that was pivotal to Camille’s story was located inside the Lambertseter fritidsklubb. As I could not do anything inside, it was decided that we would place it outside on the side of the road, which would make it accessible to the public. It also placed it on a high ground that would make it visible.
The area was just next to the walking path, meaning it would not be in the way of anything. An important consideration for this process. Most interestingly, the building is right next to the Lambertseter nature and activity park. It seemed like parts of the park were being redeveloped into a play area.
Across the street, they have court a for sports as well. I think it functions as both an ice-skating rink and baseball court. There are places to exercise, make bonfires, and foot paths, catering for youths and also families with small children. The idea of this as a playful place stood out for me, and I wanted to create a monu(mo)ment that would compliment the activities that were already happening here and hopefully for the same audience. I wanted the monu(mo)ment to blend into the symbiosis of this existing milleu rather than to create a separate life of its own.
Something to consider when planning to do work in public space in Norway, is to consider the seasons. It is already that whatever we do here, it needs to be installed in the warmer months, because the whole pavement is frozen and covered with ice during the winter months. I have had to wait months to see what the ground looked like. (PS – our permit was approved during the winter season, so in the end, we had to wait months to install the mono(mo)ment there. The joys of the Norwegian winter.
Concept development:
In Camille’s story, I became interested in how she talks about her time as a dancer as an empowering and affirming experience, like she was literally stepping into her own body, voice, confidence and learning to appreciate herself/body. And I found this idea of stepping into oneself as something powerful, that is also relatable and universal, because many of us talk about ‘finding’ ourselves at some point in life.
“I feel extremely liberated when I dance because I do whatever I want to do.”
– Camille Jones
I liked and linked the combination of her steps with a journey towards a finding of the self or a liberation/celebration of finding oneself. I thought a fitting monu(mo)ment would be to capture a fleeing moment of her liberation/celebration by asking her to present one of her favourite choreographic phrases or movement/dance sequence (as she says she feels most liberated when she moves), and then we will take the footprints of that choreography and inscribe them into the floor of the pavement outside the dance studio where she used to attend. And then we will invite the public to walk and dance in her shoes. No one will know what the actual choreography is, so they have to recreate whatever they think it was by tracing her steps.
The monu(mo)ment also challenges the public not only to recreate/retrace but to bring or create new choreographies ‘in her shoes’. They are encouraged to record them, either post them on their own social networks (with a specific hashtag). The idea is to invite people to walk in her shoes, but also to find their unique footing in the same shoes.
How to interact:
This monumoment is a call to action. As no one knows what the actual choreography is, this monumoment invites the public to (re)create what they think it was. Firstly, it calls for them to retrace what they think the original choreography is. To take a video of themselves, share it on their social media, and tag us. The specific hashtag to use for this first part is:
#RetracingInHerShoes
Secondly, this monumoment isn’t just about retracing her steps, better yet, it is also an inspiring challenge to craft their own choreography ‘in her shoes,’ forging their own path while honouring her story. The public is invited to freestyle, to find their unique footing, to leave a trace of their mark behind. Take a video of themselves, share it on their social media, and tag us. The specific hashtag to use for this first part is:
#FreestylingInHerShoes
RE-TRACE. RE-CREATE. RE-SHARE.
Thoughts on the idea:
By making this a dance challenge, I thought it would fit the children and youth target audience. It is something playful enough for them to jump on it and try it out. Also, I thought it would fit well into the playground idea, making the monu(mo)ment an extension of the play area. Since the steel bars closest to it mostly require hand coordination, I thought it blend well to go from that into a feet-based coordination or activity.
Applying for a permit:
Given how appropriate our proposal was to the location and activities there, we were very happy to receive a warm reception from the bydel when we made our application. However, despite the warm reception, the staff currently working there had never received such a request and didn’t know how to proceed further. When we suggested what we knew from handling another application with a different bydel, we were surprised to find out that they don’t follow the exact/same procedures. Luckily, the admin handling our case found this to be relevant and pushed to find out how we can do it, which he did. Despite the beauracracy involved taking a long time, this application was relatively stress-free. From the time of the application to when we signed a leasing contract, it took us a little over a year to get the permit to install it.
We were granted a permit to install the monu(mo)ment for 5 years or more. I guess in 2029 we will find out what that ‘or more’ part means.
1. Kjersti’s Line
Narrator: Kjersti
Description of Location: Sannergata bus stop (pavement next to window of the salon nearby)
Address: Thorvald Meyers gate 15A (behind the building on the Øvrefoss street side)
Concept: Eliot Moleba
Photos: Ric Francis
Artistic design: Jad El Khoury and Sara Guldmyr
Producer: Transcultural Arts Production. Funded with support from KORO -The Local Communities Programme.
Site inspection:
The key site that was proposed was near the Sannergata bus stop, at an adjecent street, there is a salon, and she was outside the building by the two big windows when the moment took place.
To me, this became a site characterised by waiting and arriving. The people waiting for the bus. Inside the salon, people are waiting or sitting to get their hair done. The theme of traffic, arrivals, and departures stood out for me. And I found it interesting that it is the same bus that brought and took the narrator from here.
It will also be important to keep the weather in mind because the street can and has at times gotten covered in ice for most of the winter season.
Concept development:
After being stuck in an abusive relationship, Kjersti describes the event that finally led her to see that she needed to get out. The camel’s back broke when her ex-partner did something that ‘crossed the line’. I became fascinated with this ‘line’ – that we have these (in)visible boundaries that we sometimes are not even aware of ourselves until people cross them. And I really wanted to honour the courage to stand up for oneself and say enough is enough: it is time to make a change!
For her monument, we are going to inscribe a physical line on the pavement outside the salon where she stood. The design of the line will be interactive in some way, and people can go to it when they have reached a point in their own lives when they are ready to say enough is enough. We’ll try to infuse the design with a function for people to leave some mark i.e., like the way people leave keychain locks on bridges with their names or initials on them. We’ll have to find a way for people to mark that they took the oath to change something important to them. Perhaps we’ll have a keypad where people can fill in, “I promise myself to…” and their answers could potentially be compiled on an online platform as a kind of a poem, which would be titled “I promise myself to”, which would list all the promises people are making on the line.
(To cross this line is considered the most binding informal or unofficial oath anyone can take. It is the closest thing to a legal contract. Between a legally binding contract and a pinkie swear is this line. Anyone who crosses the line takes the highest oath possible with themselves to change. The change may not be immediate, but once you cross the line and take the oath, your journey to change has begun, and now you cannot go back!
How to interact:
We have adapted a physical line on the pavement outside the salon where she stood. On the wall, there will be a big aluminium sign/board that will have relevant information about the line and how to participate. It will offer contain a QR code that people can scan which will take them to a digital interface (which will appear with the prompt “I/we promise myself/overselves to…”) where they can type an oath or promise they want to make to themselves, and these responses will be compiled on an online, live document as a poem, to be titled “I promise myself to…”, which will list all the promises people are making as they cross the line.
To cross this line is considered the most binding oath anyone can take. It is a verbal/written contract they make with themselves. It is the line between a legally binding contract and a pinkie swear. Anyone who crosses the line takes the highest oath possible with themselves to change. The change may not be immediate, but once you take the oath and cross line, your journey toward change has begun, and now you cannot go back!
Update: we were not allowed to physically install a line on the pavement by bymiljøetaten on the specific street, so we have appropriated a ‘found’ line on site. Namely, we have used the gutter line on the pavement as our ‘line’.
Applying for permit:
This was perhaps the most trickiest location for to install a monu(mo)ment. The area is a protected heritage neighbourhood. First, we applied to the borettslag and the bydel for permits to install them. The borettslag came back with a positive answer. The bydel did not want us to install a line on the pavement, even though we have submitted plans that show that our design and materials used will not interfere with the daily use of the site. The reason was that it may confuse people to have a line on the pavement. A very bizzaire logic to argue. In the end we had to settle for a found line on the pavement that we could appropriate. After receiving confirmation from the bydel that we could appropriate it. we were given a permit to install it for 10 years.
Thinking now we had wrapped this up, we discovered that we had asked the wrong borettslag for permission. Øvrefoss and Thorvald Meyers gate meet at the corner, but our window is located on the Øvrefoss street, so we applied to that borettslag, but later we learned that the tip of the building we are on actually belongs to the borettslag on the Thorvald Meyers gate. So we had to ask for their permission to install it and they refused. Almost 2 years worth of work, down the drain. As an alternative, they offered us to install a sign on the monter in one of the windows on the site. We tried to see if they could let us have use it on a ‘long term’ basis, but they have refused. Now we have accepted to use it on a temporary basis as offered, but now they are ghosting us. We have been trying to figure out a temporary solution to have it there at least so that we can document it and let it live digitally but at the time of writing, we have still not had any luck with them.
1. Rico on the Run 2.0
Narrator: Chollada Phinitduang
Description of location: Mobile monument
Address: Undefined
Concept: Eliot Moleba
Graffiti artist: Sander van der Valk
Producer: Transcultural Arts Production.
Site inspection:
As this was a mobile monu(mo)ment there was no site to visit. So the location played very little role in my process of generating the concept.
But I had instagram account of the van to go through and see what ideas I could draw from it. The first thing I remember when I saw it was being fascinated by the graffiti and what story was behind it.
Concept development:
“I have a van that I can park wherever I want or stay whatever I want. That’s my home.”
– Chollada Phinitduang
As someone who has been travelling a lot, both literally, that she has been moving from place to place around the world, and figuratively, that being from two cultures and never feeling entirely settled in either of them, her sense of identity is always in motion. This could explain why a life on the move has become both a means to an end and an end in itself, i.e. she is searching for something to call home but also the journey itself has become a kind of a home.
Grippingly, she talks about an identity that is in motion while calling the campervan her home, which is also literally a home on four wheels, something that is designed to be in motion. I felt like there was something interesting in this multi-layered mirroring that was happening.
She also talked about the van as something her father bought a few years after they relocated to Norway. This campervan has been an integral part of their family trips and all the memories of travelling and exploring Norway. Later when her grandmother from Thailand visited, she also went on a journey in this van with them. Sadly, after she passed away, the van became the last thing she had that she shared memories of the grandmother with, which gives it greater sentimental value.
I found it fascinating how this campervan is carrying her from place to place as she explores the world, but also the sentimental value and memories. I thought with all the mirroring that was happening, perhaps an interesting way to commemorate her story was to mirror her home and then allow others take it on journeys of their own and discover the world as she did through this home. I wanted her monu(mo)ment to embrace it somehow.
For her monu(mo)ment, I decided to buy a bobil and decorate it much the same as her van. The van will be a mobile monument of her life, she will be invited to furnish it as she wishes, and hopefully will include some personal items from her own life. It will contain album pictures of her journeys, places she visited with the van, etc. So, we have bought a van and decorated it like Rico. This van is a mobile monumoment, it carries a slice of her life, which the narrator is generously sharing with the public. Inside, it contains a section dedicated to her story, including an album picture of her journeys, places she visited with the van, a small library of books to read while you are on your journey, etc.
Also, it will be possible for people to book the van go to on their own personalised trips. The idea is that you can book it for a weekend trip and in exchange maybe you have to document your trip somehow and leave some of the documentation behind for others to see. So, in addition to Chollada’s story, the van becomes a moving archive or mobile library of people’s journeys throughout Norway.
The van will also be used as a mode of transportation for some of the guided tours. It will be possible for people to take the van to visit other sites, which would be really great especially when we have monuments that are in difficult places to reach via public transport or out of town. People can take a trip with the van to visit them.
Originally, I wanted to buy an identical campervan, but for practical reasons, I thought it would be limiting. Campervans generally sleep fewer people and can be quite crammed inside, so I was worried that it wouldn’t have enough payload and storage to carry all other elements I wanted to add inside. Additionally, I also wanted it to be possible for a big family to participate in the project.
As you can see on the exterior, we have sprayed the new van in a similar design. Beyond just the mirroring effect, there is a good reason behind this artistic choice. After she inherited the van, she wanted to do something to the exterior to make it reflect something of her. She is a big surfer and comes from the north where she grew up along the fjord surrounded by nature, water, and mountains. And she wanted to have that reflected on the van. One day, while at a surf beach in the north, she randomly met a Dutch graffiti artist and they began talking and she told him about the idea of doing something to the exterior and he offered to do it for. In half an hour, he did some spraying around and that was the result. What became apparent to me was how this event functioned as a rite of passage, of how she changed it from being her fathers to being hers. Since we had a bought a different van for the monu(mo)ment, and we were doing this mirroring, it felt like the transfer process would not be complete with this rite of passage. After she told me about the graffiti story, I thought it would be so crazy if we got the same guy to come to Norway and do the graffiti. As this bobil used to belong to somebody else, and the best way to make it hers was to invite the same guy to perform the same rite of passage and. And so we did. The result is what you see on the outside.
(To see the documentation of this process, click here (link RC link to be added)
As someone who has been travelling a lot, both literally, she has been moving from place to place, and figuratively, being from two cultures and never feeling entirely settled in either of them, her sense of identity is always in changing. This could explain why a life on the move has become both a means to an end and an end in itself, i.e. the search for something to call home, but also the journey itself has become a kind of a home. This dialectic is one of the fascinating things about her life journey, and her monumoment calls for us to embrace it.
How to interact:
We invite the public to book Rico for their own personalised trips. The idea is that they can book it for a weekend or week for a memorable trip with family or friends. In exchange, all we ask is that they document the trip and leave some of their experiences behind for others to see or read about. More specifically, they are required to write a journal entry into our hyttebok and take 10 polaroid pictures (they keep 5 and leave 5 in the van). With the traces of stories left behind, the van becomes a moving generator and archive or mobile library of people’s journeys throughout Norway and beyond.
Applying for a permit:
As a mobile monu(mo)ment, this is so far the only one that did not need a permit.
Towards understanding the monu(mo)ment’s generative capacity
At the beginning of the PhD project, I saw what was then called monuments largely as part of the source material I was going to use to devise a theatrical production. With my initial impression of a monument as a static structure to be observed, I thought it would be the act of bringing them into my theatremaking that would make them come ‘alive’. This is the famous adage we theatre people love to (over)use. I never imagined a scenario where the monuments would grow into something else, let alone something that crosses it into the performative realm. I have often talked about taking the monument into my performance/theatre, but instead it was my performance/theatre that went into the monument. Through the evolution of the monument, I believe it is the generative capacity[1] of the monu(mo)ments that is largely responsible for this crossover. Over the past year, I have been trying to understand and breakdown how this works. And since each monu(mo)ment is generating something different, it became important to understand what is their common denominator that is the driving force being their generative capacity.
After the first monu(mo)ments went into production, there was now enough ongoing artistic work to use as a basis to intensify my reflections on this exploration further. In these monu(mo)ments, is also clear to see this generative quality/capacity at work. Kjersti’s Line, still awaiting approval from the borreslag to be installed in their monter, is conceptualised to generate promises that are used to compose a poem. In Her Shoes which is being installed, with a launch projected to be on the 7th June (two weeks before you’ll receive this document), it is going to generate new choreographies. Rico on the Run (2.0) is generating travel diary entries and photographs that document people’s journeys with the van. Even though there are limited reflections I can offer on how the public has interacted with them. Still, in this time period I have been reflecting on the monu(mo)ments trying to figure out what this generative capacity mean. And what has emerged from my reflections so far is that their generative capacity seems to function more like a score. It is the starting point for the public to interpret both the monu(mo)ment itself and how to engage with it.
“In the performing arts, we identify a score as a set of instructions, guidelines or tasks related to the creation of a performance that serves as the starting point for improvisation or as a communication tool for generating movement and action. It can assume multiple forms, from oral to written, from drawn to painted, and from analogue to digital.” (Franco, Chernetich, & Mikou, 2024)
Correspondingly, each monu(mo)ment provides a set of instructions on how the public is meant to engage with it. The instructions are either inscribed into a signpost, physically into the monu(mo)ment itself, or through a QR code that takes the public to a digital interface. As a playwright/director, the process of developing the scores felt like I was writing a combination of stage directions and director’s notes. Given that a sizable part of my existing artistic practice is generated through devised processes where the final script is written last, and turns to be more of an annotation of what we did on the floor, which reads quite differently to a piece written from imagination. For one, these annotations are heavily prescriptive because they tell the reader about what we did, written in a way that shows that the events being narrated have already been intepreted. Being familiar with this process, it became useful when approaching and developing the instructions or scores for the monu(mo)ments.
As these monu(mo)ments are designed to be interactive in a way that allow the public to shape their meaning, their scores serves as an invitation, or a starting point for how the public can engage. They are designed to trigger movement or an action as a form of a response and interpretation. The public is always called to action. By taking this action the public can leave a trace or ‘slice of their lives’ behind. Thus, through the score, these actions unfolds over time, guiding the temporal experience of the monu(mo)ment. The first action is guided purely by the score alone, but the subsequent ones are guided by both the score and other previous actions. Now it is both the score and the public’s previous actions directing the future actions on the monu(mo)ments.
As a playwright/director, I began to notice how the score also creates “situations” where the public’s actions take on a mimetic quality. For example, In Her Shoes asks the public to walk/dance in the narrator’s shoes whereas Kjersti’s Line evokes speech acts outlined by John Austin by asking the public to take a vow, or pledge an oath to change something. The public is invited to mimic or reproduce real actions, which are then inscribed into the monu(mo)ment and become something else. This also began to reveal how dramaturgy is implicit in the score. The dramaturgic structure generates ‘situated actions’. Although these “situations” or their situatedness is not dramatic, it places the public at the intersection where they are responsible for both interpreting and creating new meanings through their actions in the encounter with the monu(mo)ment, effectively turning them into co-creators.
What becomes special about this ‘generative capacity’ in the monu(mo)ments is not that it encourages meaningful audience interactions, but how as a dramaturgy/score it has created a specific way of doing it. Many monuments indeed do this, it is nothing new in the stretch of the imagination. But what is unique to this is a technique of how to do it in the context of making monu(mo)ments. Throught this reflective practice, I came to clarify something critical, I thought I could determine how this artistic concept of the monu(mo)ments and its generative capacity was doing something new in terms of results, but now I see that it is not the results but the process. After wrestling with this for months, the closest thing to answer I have is that it is not what the monument does that is most special, but the method outlined of how it does it. Of course, there are many monuments which do similar things, but they don’t do it through the same approach. When I started this process, I thought I was redefining the monuments but in fact, what I was also doing was creating a new way/method/technique of monu(mo)menting, rooted in the three functions I have outlined.
Continuing the monu(mo)ments beyond the PhD project
Since my PhD is now coming to an end just when the monu(mo)ments are going into the world, the legacy of this artistic research is really yet to be seen, but something that will continue to grow long after my studies. In partnership with TrAP, the instrumental people who have helped me to produce the current pilot monu(mo)ments, we have decided to launch phase two of my PhD under the title of the “Monu(mo)ments Series”, which is a project dedicated to turning stories of Norway’s diversity into interactive, performative works of public art. Under this initiative, we will continue to develop more monu(mo)ments. Taking the work forward is especially appropriate since the basis of this artistic project was to create permanent public inscriptions.
We are hoping to add more monu(mo)ments annually. For now, the plan is to still focus on stories based in Oslo, to produce a significant foothold for the project before we branch out into the rest of Norway. This foothold in the city is also necessary for allowing us to growing the guided tour, which we are going to use as a vehicle to embed the project in the cultural life and tourism sector of the city, to generate attention and recognition.
We want to extend the guided tour that was offered during the appraisal week to the general public and institutions like schools. It is both the tourists but especially the locals, trying to encourage Oslo inhabitants to embrace and get to know some of the diversity around them. As our motto goes:
We will tell you stories about the fascinating lives of people
you walk past or take the bus with every day!
The current tour only includes completed monu(mo)ments, but in the future we will also include sites of monumoments that are either still in the process of being installed or at an ideation level, where they will meet them as things that are yet to be. The tours will cover the background stories of the narrators, focusing on the key events that will inspire their monu(mo)ments. Here are a few monu(mo)ments that are already being prepared for the next round of funding applications.
Monu(mo)ments of the future
A story
Concept: Making a room in the city for those with immigrant backgrounds to come and unpack the burdens they carry with them. The monumoment will be a shipping container, which will either be mobile or permanently fixed somewhere.
ADDRESS: Somewhere in Bjørvika
Title: The Queen of Oslo’s house
Concept development:
What really struck me about this story is that, after a life on the road, the narrator has accumulated a lot of boxes with no home or ‘room’ of her own to unpack them. Her things or parts of her have been in boxes for a very long time. She has felt a great sense of uprootedness. Her sense of belonging is tied to this missing room to unpack her stuff, which I read as needing a safe or comfortable place to unpack the many layers of herself/identity. The final place where they can stay. She describes these ‘boxes’ as things that most immigrants carry with them:
“You carry this bag and, you know, my Swedish boyfriend doesn't have a bag. Doesn't have this bag. But I do. And my Palestinian brother does, and my South African brother does. We have those bags. And we have those objects, you know, and we don't buy these objects like our white Norwegian friends. "Oh, I was in a safari." Or, "I was an exchange student in Colombia at this camp", you know, we don't have those objects like that. You know, also we have those objects, and sometimes we use them and sometimes we don't. They're in my basement. They're screaming to be used to.”
Interestingly, she has had visions of this room and what it must look like. Even though it’s not a place she has created yet, she is quite specific about what it must be. Since she never had a place to make her own, she turned to the city. It is the Oslo city itself that has always felt like a home to her. She has been to almost every venue and goes on urban walks and tells stories about the architecture of the city. She calls herself the unofficial queen of Oslo!
My idea for her monu(mo)ment is to combine her search and visions of this home/room and the city as a place of belonging for her. So, I have asked her to design this room that she dreams of. For the monument itself, we will buy a container that we can put somewhere in the city, and she can use it to recreate her imagined room or home. It must have big glass windows for the public to see through. We will use this ‘room’ in multiple ways. As an artist, I want her to create an ‘exhibition’ of the ‘bags’ or ‘boxes’ that she carries with her as an immigrant who settled in Norway. It should document real objects that belong to her, drawing from the many boxes or bags that remain unpacked. This will be a place to unpack them. A part of this exhibition should be ‘fixed’ or permanently installed in one of the corners of the space. After a certain timeframe, we will open the room to the public to bring their own boxes to inhabit the space. I don’t think we should invite other artists to exhibit per se, but rather ordinary people who are not in the public eye. Information can be made available at the site for people to register if they would like to show what their unpacked boxes or bags look like.
Theoretically, since she is also a storyteller, we can possibly host small storytelling sessions that may be led and curated by her. To make her the queen of this little room, and make it her little stage. It will be possible to make the top (i.e., roof) of the container into something interesting as well. Perhaps it could even host a part of another monument.
B story
Concept: Weaving hair/braids as a metaphor, identity, and narrative
Address: TBC
Title: Braided: Untangling myself
Concept development:
This story brings the politics of hair to the foreground. As a mixed-race person, the narrator felt like to keep her ‘Norwegianness’, she had to minimize her ‘African-ness’ or ‘otherness’. This translated in her not being able to wear braids, as that would make too much of a statement about her ‘otherness’. After moving from her small town to Oslo, she was cast in a play at The Norwegian theatre and as part of her character, she decided to wear braids after a long time. What I found fascinating about this story is how through a fictional character, she rediscovers a part of herself that she had buried for a long time.
I wanted to make a monumoment that would celebrate and embrace this rediscovery. I thought it would be appropriate to make a textile or metal wire-based sculpture, with braided hair. The braids are manipulable. When the sculpture is unveiled for the first time, the narrator will be asked to style the braids, to express something important to her. After that, within a given timeframe, say, a week or month, random people will be allowed to style the braids however they wish. Each one must write a post or blog entry about why that hairstyle is significant to them. We will document these variations overtime.
The idea is also to play – albeit metaphorically – with the concept of identity as something multi-layered and complex that we often make sense of through narration. The same way the braids are weaved together to create a new style, we also weave different parts of our lived experiences to create our identities.
C story
Concept: Breaking the glass ceiling
Address: Grorud
Title: Breaking the glass ceiling
Concept development:
This is almost the perfect immigrant story, of someone who comes to Norway as a refugee and works their way to the top. The narrator tells the story of how an Afghan architecture student and UN refugee ended up with one of the top jobs in the Oslo public administration. The first Norwegian of immigrant background born outside of Norway to ever achieve such a feat. As Norway is beginning to embrace its diversity, we are starting to see more and more stories of multicultural Norway finding their way into positions and achievements that have historically only been held by ‘ethic’ Norwegians.
Inspired by the narrator’s success story and to commemorate it, I wanted to create a monumoment where people go to celebrate being the ‘first one or first time’ to do or achieve something within your specific / designated ‘social group’ in Norway.
The design of the monumoment will include a frame with the title, “I am/we are the first…” and then there will be a placard that is part of the design that people can use to write their message (“person in Y to win X). The person can ‘pose’ with the placard and take a picture, which remains the poster of the monumoment until someone else takes another one. The monumoment generates and archives how Norwegians are breaking glass ceilings that have defined or limited their social groups.