Twelfth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The research investigates the relationship between monuments and public spaces, to encourage increased representation, and to rethink the way we honor or commemorate our heroes. A survey of monuments in Detroit, a majority black city, revealed that most were dedicated to historic white European figures. Urban experience is conditioned by image and such statues or monuments project complex and contradictory meanings that precede the history of the city itself. These “moral figures” also territorialize public spaces to which they don’t historically or culturally belong. When the body is an agent in the production of urban history, culture, and policy those few statues dedicated to people of color were partial bodily representations that lacked the same physical realism and weren’t interpreted under the same criteria. Consequently, current works are not reflective of the local community that once thrived on these lands and neighborhoods. No matter when such monuments were made, the public outgrows their accepted meanings. Their very permanence makes it vulnerable to erasure- it can only be either rejected or accepted. It begs monuments to retain more mutability or ephemerality and allow opportunities to evolve and change. Digitizing monuments can preserve narratives and oral histories of communities. Using a simplified system of photogrammetry, digital monuments are generated as sites of protest that shift the curatorial power of space-making and spatial stewardship from authorities to the people - modern subjectivities can be overlaid at will.