Memosphere. Rethinking Monuments

The publication of the pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennial groups theoretical and visual contributions as the first episode in a long-term project that aims to rethink the contemporary monument. It stems from the belief that monuments are ‘impossible necessities’, that monuments are problematic knots entangling decisive questions about the modes of history and ideology that constitute or condition communities. The artistic, critical repossession of the monument could bring enlightening arguments in the discussion about the subversive capabilities of political art, perhaps actualizing Thomas Hirschhorn’s enigmatic dictum about ‘making art politically’, in a practice that does not evacuate the possibility of failure and does not dissimulate it in lesser ambitions and diminishing scale.