HUMAN MEMORIAL

“Public Art and Memorial Making: A Provocation”, Festival of Debate, June 2021

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Public Art and Memorial Making: Since Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, and Rhodes Must Fall movements.  

What do you stand for? Or more importantly, when and where?

Ironically, when we’ve been socially distancing ourselves at home, the empty streets and public spaces has been a political site of contestation.

The right to protest publicly, and what public monuments represent our history, have been spurred by events across the globe since the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting the racial inequalities in today’s society, as a result of our colonial past.

This is a call to artists, how do we tell our histories, create a culture of change, and form the practical steps to move forward?

My art practice finds connection with the overlooked histories of people, objects and places seen through my own biographical story-telling, and sense of ‘self’.

I explore how my race, gender, class and sexuality aligns with other historical personages to bridge the gap between the past, and how the legacies of these ideas are held the present, and developed in the future.  

In my project “Towards Memorial”, I explored the remaking, gifting and wearing, of sandals once designed and handmade by gay socialist activist Edward Carpenter who lived (just outside Sheffield) in Millthorpe around the late 1800s.

After gifting the sandals to The Friends of Edward Carpenter, a group of activists who wanted to commission a permanent public memorial to Carpenter in Sheffield city centre, the artwork developed in dialogue to their ambitions.

The sandals became a protagonist in generating discussion and debate about the commissioning of public statues and monuments. Through a series of films (made by Picture Story Productions) I began to considered the sandals themselves when gifted and worn, as an alternative form of public memorial.

Since COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements have intensified with public protests and demonstrations by activists wanting removal of public statues relating to Britain’s colonial past.

It prompted me to consider the alternative forms and methods of memorial making, emphasising the more intimate, inter-personal, gestures of social art practice, and the potential of collaboration, co-design, and community participation.

Simply driven by wanting to wrestle the conversation away from the ‘culture wars’ debate, party politics, and actively engage with artists from diverse backgrounds into the discussion.

For example, Paul Harfleet’s “Pansy Project”, who simply plants a pansy in the places where people have experienced homophobic abuse.

Ryan Leitner’s “Strange Inheritance”, who physically cleans and cares for public memorials to the AIDS crisis in the US.

Jeremy Deller’s “We’re Here Because We’re Here”, where the public encounter actors as soldiers dressed in uniform, to commemorate the anniversary of Battle of Somme.

Anthony Gormley’s “One and Other”, who invited hundreds of members the general public to occupy the space of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, for an hour each.

These examples, simultaneously ask, how we de-monumentalise the artwork, how we reconcile our collective histories, and how our bodies are central to the problem, and the solution.

Importantly, artists are at the centre of this process, as the makers of these contested art objects, and when situated, as the focal point where many public protests congregate.                

So, what now?

During the making of “Towards Memorial” between 2016-2019, a re-occurring visual motif developed where I, or participants, would step up onto a make-shift platform or plinth.

The idea began, while in Sheffield City archives, holding a paper pattern that described the shape and size of Edward Carpenter’s foot. And as if cradling his actual foot, I imagined him stood on the table top where I sat.

This developed, when gifting the sandals to participants in their own homes. Where, the action suggested the possibility of our own bodies replacing those of the authorised statues and monuments in public space.

I think of Magid Magid, when photographed as the new Major of Sheffield, he took to a platform, or a balustrade, showing his trade mark boots. The act was consciously marking a change in the city’s history, and the order of things.             

In the summer of 2020, watching (over and over) the footage of BLM protesters tearing down the Colston Statue in Bristol. Some pulling the rope noosed around the statue, some chanting and encouraging the act, the majority recording the event through their phones. However, when the statue falls, some seize onto the fallen monument, and one activist jubilantly jumps onto the empty plinth.

The aftermath of the statue’s removal, led to artist Marc Quinn to temporarily occupy the space of the empty plinth with a statue created of the activist Jen Reid. A body co-opted by an established white male artist in a gesture that demonstrated his privilege.

And the subsequent, protection of statues and monuments linked to Britain’s colonial past, boarded up, creating new temporary monolith structures, to protect the monument, surrounded by protesters with their own placards in protest.

The empty plinth has become a potent symbol of what has been, where we are now, and what could be? As we ask, what we do with these statues and monuments, remove them, re-plaque them, replace them?

In a new artwork, titled “The Human Memorial”, I’ve made a portable plinth, that I push and drag around the places and spaces of our colonial past. The plinth enables me to ask individuals, communities, and the wider public the question about what they stand for, where and when, in the places of their communities, and with what and how?

 So, if you see me, stop me, step up, speak out and make a stand… 

We have become the monument, and therefore we have become the memorial.

N.B. In the essay “The Plates of the Encyclopaedia”, Roland Barthes suggests that the Flaubert diagrams showing the casting process of the statues of Louise XIV are a subversion of their authority, a “violent demystification” from “warrior” to “monstrous doll”. In exposing and revealing the art production process, we slice and dice through the myth of power, authority, institutions and their hold over us. Considering this, “The Human Memorial” explores what happens during the art production process, finding new connections in the act of ‘construction’ and ‘making’, as a counterpoint to conversations about ‘undoing’ and ‘dismantling’ the representation of our own colonial bodies, and their relationship to others in authority, and public space.

May 2021