Krauss investigates historicism; we don’t have to agree but it helps us to realise 1) this course is historically bounded 2) ways we can logically extend beyond the boundaries which are implied/conjured in the brain
After all, Krauss is trying to save sculpture from collapsing, to define it also against these other things - which could reasonably all be claimed as sculpture - at least from the producer (not critic) side
Seems a little reductive to sculpture, as in, but can’t sculpture engage with architecture? or environment? or is it that only a sculptor can do this?
not all sculptures are monuments and not all monuments are sculptures
a monument to an old building footprint is suddenly sculpture? a church becomes a sculpture when a bomb is put through it?
monuments are a Duchampian act of selection, a collective cultural decision to preserve? A social context
Its about stories
Monuments are a social context. They are a mnemonic device from one generation to the next; they memorialise stories about things that have happened. Sometimes a figure, or they can be sites; this second one is now the more common ‘negation.’ They use signs and symbols, sometimes these are esoteric, but they are not intended to be - that’s a question of design. Many depict sudden ruptures, tied to a time and space. The [figurative] ones are a little different; designed to evoke a collective memory of something that happened somehwere else, or all over the place. [Monuments relate to the public not] projections of private into public space.
In any case - if its about stories - whats my story?
What about banal monuments
monuments to rupture, sudden disruption, selection
monuments assume familiarity with the story. Is it enough of a subversion to monumentalise a nonsense or esoteric story?
may I think that Serra’s monuments [eg. tilted Arc] are things in places [that Tilted Arc relates to architecture and public space interventions of the 70s] and are not monuments at all. [or perhaps it is, but the monumentalised thing is an esoteric artworld story.]
in conclusion, if you want it to be a true monument, its needs either a collective story, or a rupture to a collective story [that reveals the presence of the collective story.]
general performance approaches to monuments include their dissolution. How to make it enough? The answer may lie in dissemination, repetition or duration
power structures are inevitable connotations in the commissioning [process] of monuments
Why the monument, what story, and why a brick?
interrogating the monument…
monument is a social context
monumentalising without the monumental, or monumentalism
just at the point where language starts to break down …
further thoughts: look closely at Berlin memorial, 9/11 memorial, Vietnam memorial
look at where we bury the nuclear waste to see design that is ‘inherent’ rather than ‘symbolic’.