Scratching the Surface

Moving Monuments seminar on the histories, materialities, and temporalities of the surfaces of monuments and statues in public space.

In recent years, there has been a surge in attention towards interventions targeting monuments and public statues. Images depicting statues modified with paint or graffiti, as well as of the subsequent cleaning processes, where city officials remove the paint, have circulated globally following the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020. This has raised awareness towards the role of the monument in the ongoing negotiations of the materialization of commemorative expressions in public spaces. As paint, graffiti, and other interactions with public statues are often erased, traces of how people intervene with statues in public space, and what messages these interventions may carry from demonstrations to “everyday” use, are rarely preserved.

Whether viewed as acts of protest, re-inscription, re-materialization, or other forms of engagement, these actions, alongside ongoing conservation efforts, emphasize an important, but often-overlooked aspect of public monuments: their surfaces. As scholarly research and public debates adopt a traditional focus on the aesthetics of public statuary as adhering to ideas about form and materiality, their surfaces remain unexplored. But as art historian Lise Skytte Jakobsen points out in Metaskulptur (2019), the surface is an agile layer that can be altered, removed, or added to, profoundly influencing our perception of the sculpture.

While monuments pose as symbols of durability and permanence in discussions of public history and memory, the maintenance work needed to ensure that they appear stable and lasting often goes unnoticed. Despite efforts to maintain their static presence, all materials inevitably decay. There remains, in short, a pressing need to examine the histories, ideologies, and temporalities at play in and on the surface of monuments, and their effects on their aesthetic, political and commemorative function.

With this seminar, we aim to delve into the dynamic nature of monument surfaces and their impact on public perception. We wish to bring people together for joint discussions and considerations on how enriching the vocabulary and terminology surrounding interventions and preservation efforts can enhance both public and academic discourse. By exploring the intersections of materiality, temporality, and memory, we aim to deepen our understanding of how monuments' images, meanings, and physical presence are negotiated, both historically and in contemporary contexts.

The seminar is arranged within the frames of the research project “Moving Monuments: The Material Life of Sculpture from the Danish Colonial Era” funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and housed by the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, UCPH.

For questions, please contact Ida Hornung Havgaard

The seminar is free and open for all – no registration required.