0:04

hi everyone um i’d like to welcome you tonight my name is shauna mccabe and i’m the director of the art gallery of guelph

0:10

um who is hosting this event tonight i’d like to welcome you all and offer a land acknowledgement to

0:16

start the statement is critical for cultural institutions as it recognizes the history

0:21

and the ongoing impacts of colonialism as well as the historical complicity of arts and heritage institutions

0:27

through their approaches to representation of difference and these images and narratives have

0:33

have quite a significant authority in the public sphere typically a land acknowledgement

0:39

recognizes the traditional ownership of the lands upon which an event is held but as we are all gathered virtually

0:46

today connected and yet physically dispersed across borders it’s a good moment to reflect on the

0:51

significance of place wherever we are and how the different traditional lands that we reside in and move through

0:57

and form our lives we respect the significance of treaties that continue to affirm the inherent

1:03

sovereignty of indigenous nations and recognize a responsibility for the stewardship of the lands on which we

1:08

live work and create i’m very pleased to be speaking with

1:14

uh ken lum and john tupper tonight um uh two of my colleagues and uh who are

1:21

also good uh friends um they’ve known each other for quite some time

1:26

um a note to everyone who’s joining us we we do have everyone on mute and if you have questions as we go

1:32

um you can just uh input them into the the chat area and we’ll uh follow up with those

1:38

um towards the end of the evening it seemed important to have this conversation as

1:45

we close this quite tremendous year when filled with new thinking about history and memory

1:51

and calls to action to address the voids and absences in public history around the world

1:57

this series actually began the day before election day in the united states with a conversation with nina

2:03

cachadorian about her project and installation called monument to be unelected

2:08

and we’ve been looking at varying issues and ideas related to monuments in the monumental landscape

2:17

first to introduce our guests so first ken although he’s currently based in philadelphia ken is a canadian artist

2:24

known for his multi-disciplinary art practice that spans painting sculpture installation and photography

2:31

a long-time professor he is currently the maryland jordan taylor presidential professor and chair of the department of fine arts

2:37

at the university of pennsylvania stuart weitzman school of design

2:42

from 2000 to 2006 he was head of the graduate program in studio art at the university of

2:49

british columbia vancouver where he taught from 1990 until 2006.

2:55

he then joined the faculty of bard college um in 2005 and worked there until 2007

3:02

and he’s been a visiting professor for numerous institutions internationally he’s the co-founder and founding editor

3:09

of yeeshu journal of contemporary chinese art he uh was the project manager for

3:15

auckland wizards of the short century independence and liberation movements in africa in 1945

3:21

to 1994 that was in 2001 he was also co-curator of the seventh charge of

3:27

biennial in 2005 and shanghai modern in 2005. he’s exhibited widely

3:35

including the sao paulo biennial shanghai biennale documenta 11 the istanbul biennial

3:42

guangzhou biennial moscow bayern in 2014. he’s published many essays on

3:50

art and collected recently in a wonderfully titled book uh everything is relevant so everything

3:57

is relevant and that’s really a philosophical stance that is clear through all of ken’s work he’s also

4:04

realized permanent public art commissions and temporary installations in cities including vienna

4:11

vancouver utrecht st moritz toronto and st louis

4:17

um in thinking about this this talk tonight i invited my colleague john tupper to be part of this as john and

4:23

ken have a long history john curated ken’s project photo mirrors wild director of the walter phillips gallery at the banff

4:30

center presenting it at the sao paulo biennial that year

4:35

um as canelo was representing canada john is the director of the art gallery

4:41

of greater victoria formerly director of the confederation center art gallery as well

4:46

as the walter phillips gallery and plug-in gallery in winnipeg before i turn it over to ken’s

4:54

talk about monument lab i wanted to just show you a few images of his past work um just to

5:00

introduce you to his art practice so you can get a sense of the trajectory

5:06

that brings him to monument lab today so these are some of um some of the uh

5:13

so your earlier work again uh this is i know uh sort of one of the beloved piece

5:21

and this was uh installed in 1990 at width to width melisha hates her job and really

5:28

highlights kind of your interest in signage and graphic design um and that actually well sorry to

5:34

interrupt y’all but you it should be know that that uh the with the whit gallery uh museum i should say is no longer will

5:42

no longer be called the with the whit museum but will be called the melee quince institute the name

5:48

to the name of the work because with the width is the name of cornelius with the wit

5:55

was a work for the dutch east india company and was engaged in slave trade

6:04

so is the name change happening now i mean it’s happening uh towards the third week

6:10

or just before the fourth week of january okay okay excellent

6:16

um and this was a series even before that um and so signage and graphic design has

6:23

been a long time focus of your work uh 1989 portrait logo series

6:30

um the rorschach sign series from this is later 2008

6:37

strip mall series 2009 these are some of my favorites

6:45

uh monument to east vancouver from from 2010

6:50

so beginning to work in installation

6:55

from shangri-la to shangri-la 2010 as well this is actually uh the the structures

7:03

the house actually references the um homes in uh north vancouver on on the uh on the mud flats

7:12

uh i-70 installation from missouri in 2015.

7:20

memorial to the battle of wartona peace through valor 2016 and this is uh in nathan phillips square

7:26

in toronto and that’s it

7:34

i’ll stop sharing here

7:41

while in philadelphia ken co-founded monument lab with paul farber and monument lab is a public art and

7:48

history studio designed to generate new ways of thinking about monuments and public art as well as to find new critical

7:54

perspectives to reflect on the monuments we have inherited and to imagine those we have yet to build

8:00

um and focused initially on philadelphia’s mandate has been broadening uh recently um which i know uh

8:08

ken will tell us about so do you want to share your screen

8:37

you might need to unmute okay start with that again thanks very much

8:42

for the very kind introduction shauna and um it’s wonderful to meet you and uh but also for me uh particularly

8:50

effecting to meet my dear friend john tupper who i’ve known since the beginning of my art

8:56

career virtually so so it’s great great to be reacquainted monument lab started in 2012.

9:04

it started in the year i moved to philadelphia it was a city that uh i was completely new to i’d visited once

9:11

before within my when as a teenager but that was about it and um

9:16

and but didn’t know much about it and uh and once i moved there to work at the university of pennsylvania

9:23

um i was very interested in noting all the markers and and signage and

9:29

historical signage and the statuary that i was encountering throughout the city there’s over 1 000

9:36

official statues in in the city because it’s you know it’s a city it’s over 450 years old and so um

9:43

i i lived i have to live very near um the billy holiday house right billy is

9:49

his great great jazz singer who obviously died tragically and

9:54

and so on and so i i read this and i took a great interest in this and as i started to walk around

10:00

philadelphia in fact on the same day

10:06

i i encountered this statue of john wallamaker a distinguished citizen who had a

10:13

namesake department store called wanna makers he was the inventor of the sales tag

10:19

and uh i also never heard of him before and uh not that he’s not deserving of uh

10:25

recognition but this is uh this statue is actually cited on the skirt on the apron of city hall itself

10:33

so you know how old ground for the city and um and i started i started thinking

10:41

well well surely there must be a statue of billy holiday but subsequently i found out there was no statue of billy holiday

10:47

and i thought wow okay i’ll start thinking about the unevenness of the system of representation borne

10:55

out by the monuments of of philadelphia who gets represented who doesn’t who gets um and of course it’s a

11:02

reflection of power and prestige you know as many of you know you know the the soul of philadelphia is

11:08

african-american there’s about 40 43 uh population is african-american it

11:15

used to be even closer to 55 but because of the last 20 years of you know gentrification and so on and

11:23

a lot of new yorkers who have been can’t afford new york moving to philadelphia it’s only an hour by train

11:29

to this to new york um the african-american population has has been declining and of course

11:36

philadelphia has a great history of african-americans you know from marianne anderson to john coltrane

11:43

uh you know to uh you know duke ellington and count basie playing there you know the

11:49

south of philadelphia three three degrees at harold melvin the blue notes you you know you can just go on and on and so um

11:58

that became a kind of endless source of uh almost like a game for me i started trying to map it out uh not

12:05

just cognitively but actually map it out on my computer who who wasn’t included who deserves to be

12:10

included and and and so on and uh and then um you know for just to

12:17

underline that point you know there’s a movie called rocky which was very popular and which culminates in the

12:23

rocky climbing up to the uh up the steps of the philadelphia museum of art and comes

12:29

saluting his city and um sylvester stallone donated this

12:34

uh bronze of uh rocky balboa and it was sited on

12:40

on top of the steps uh which is controlled by the city it’s not part of the museum oddly enough

12:46

and uh it was recognized for and it’s still there it’s the only official

12:53

uh statue of a boxer in that’s owned by the city now the curious thing is that

12:59

philadelphia does have a real heavyweight champion boxer smoking joe

13:04

frazier who actually beat muhammad ali in in you know in three in one of the three

13:10

epic or uh fights and um and but uh so this was in 2015

13:17

and nbc comcast which is uh owned by it’s a comcast company which is owned

13:24

it’s and located in headquartered in philadelphia uh commissioned uh this thought it was

13:29

there’s an injustice and commissioned this uh statue of uh joe frazier

13:35

the difference is that this is on private property it was a private commission so to this day there’s no official

13:41

recognition of of joe frazier at least in terms of civic space and so these sorts of things were kind

13:47

of percolating and i started thinking about um and and as shauna alluded to i’m very

13:53

interested in this division between public and private space uh anyways and um i met paul farber who

13:59

was teaching in urban studies at the university uh very early on uh at penn and uh we both realized we

14:07

were teaching very similar courses or at least asking very similar questions and about the distribution of power

14:13

and obviously questions of inequity and social justice and and so on and uh we started

14:20

riffing on the idea there should be uh uh an exhibition on this and he came up

14:26

with the idea to you know we should do an exhibition and maybe get do it in the gallery and so on

14:32

and i’d done these you know city-wide exhibitions and so i said no no this is too big this needs to be

14:37

city-wide and that’s how monumental i was born we just we just

14:42

started you know um doing it and uh but one thing about the united states is

14:47

that uh you know and it’s a very it’s very paradoxical i think most canadians know this is that on the one hand

14:53

you have you know terrible and deep skepticism of government on the other hand um and so

15:00

that results in the privatization of schools creates a school price crisis there’s a health care

15:06

crisis obviously undergirded by the coronavirus but it’s also still a place

15:12

where if you have an idea and you go up to certain uh you know uh foundations

15:17

you can get a lot of money to to do projects in a real hurry and so i made a proposal to um the pew

15:25

uh foundation which is a huge foundation and they said well we we don’t trust that you know it would

15:32

be successful yet in terms of the city because that would be you know a multi-million dollar project

15:38

and so we’ll give you a smaller sum and it turned out to be 300 000

15:43

to do um uh an iteration uh kind of template a smaller version of

15:49

the citywide uh exhibition in 2015 and 2017

15:54

because of the success of the of the one iteration which was held in this courtyard of city hall

15:59

and it became very very popular 300 000 people came to see it they said we trust you to have this and

16:05

then once and they provided us with uh you know upon our million and point two

16:11

million dollars and and then um uh the uh penn foundation said we’ll cover another million and a half and next

16:18

thing you know we had almost you know two and a half million dollars to do the show in a very short time and so on but but

16:26

you know we had to make a pitch we had i had to write an essay and and and present ourselves uh

16:32

and under our idea and so this is just the uh we we we

16:40

collaborated with the pennsylvania academy of fine arts that’s where um you know uh thomas eakins taught winslow

16:46

homer was there uh john singer sergeant you know it’s a very storied art school with these kind

16:52

of amazing american painters and um we uh you know so i’m just going to run

16:58

through the exhibition but also some of the some of the issues which we

17:03

raised and i can just say maybe i’ll just read one paragraph from our statement philadelphia is a

17:09

city full of monuments and memorials philadelphia is also a city full of monumental histories many of which are little

17:15

known obscured or simply unacknowledged these underrepresented histories often

17:21

exist in tension with officially acknowledged narratives the projects that make up monument lab

17:26

address issues of social justice and solidarity including matters of race gender

17:32

sexuality class and national belonging the monuments proposed through this exhibition are

17:37

made of stone and bronze as well as recycled materials images sounds and the byproducts of

17:43

community process and oh i’m just showing you this that um

17:49

i should have had the image earlier this is of the great black educator octavious cattle who was um

17:58

advancing the uh right encouraging african americans in philadelphia to vote

18:04

uh in the uh state and presidential elections and for that he was shot dead by a racist

18:09

on in south philadelphia and this is and this was in 19 2017 and it’s the first sanctioned

18:17

officially sanctioned statue of a full figure statue of an african american

18:22

in philadelphia it’s the only one to this day right there are figures of african-american full-figured

18:28

statues in philadelphia but they tend to be of um somewhat problematic like they’re

18:33

holding up the columns or the ceiling of the city hall and so on so they represent

18:40

kind of racial types as opposed to an actual historical figure and so

18:46

this is our process in which we worked out we didn’t want the exhibition to be

18:51

um simply a biennial you know where we you know like a documentary or or or by anywhere you know artists

18:59

make site-specific work and and so on we wanted it not just to be an art exhibition but to be a process of democratic input

19:08

we knew we wanted um data we knew we wanted the involvement of neighborhoods we

19:13

really we wanted genuine dialogue not just cursory dialogue and so many shows

19:19

uh uh have this very cursory and temporal relationship to neighborhoods so our process was to question

19:27

dig into research about uh statue site or public space and that meant writing uh about the

19:33

iconography the hidden histories the provenance of uh even this and uh various

19:40

um even uh uh reviews and opinions about the statu statue and it’s amazing

19:45

how little is actually compiled for so many of these uh officially sanctioned

19:50

statues so we questioned dig into research about statue site or public space we connected meaning organized and

19:58

exchanged ideas with stakeholders and invested in places of memory and that

20:04

means uh exchanging ideas with the local citizens in the neighborhood in

20:09

which a uh monument would be cited a provisional monument would be cited as part of the monument lab exhibition

20:16

and we discovered very early on that uh local citizens three know their neighborhoods

20:24

and know and we discount the knowledge that they bring to bear at our apparel you know

20:30

they would know and we don’t we didn’t judge the and uh evaluate the importance of what they

20:35

knew for example we would talk to some people and they’d say well that field there was owned by mr brown and before mr brown

20:42

was was his nice couple and so on and we thought that was a value too so we didn’t we didn’t see anything not

20:48

a value we we wanted to be as open as possible we didn’t we didn’t have

20:53

certain expectations beforehand when we met uh with the people we also wanted in our

21:00

process to unfix redefine the conversation about the past present and future monuments

21:06

and we our process involved a prototype what we call the prototype monument

21:11

and here behind the text here is sharon hayes work um uh if they should ask which is a

21:18

compendium of various um collides and and bases for statues of male

21:25

uh figures in philadelphia and then etched into the uh base they are names of um of women

21:33

significant women philadelphians who perhaps should are also deserving of representation

21:40

officially so uh and lastly we wanted to report um find uh share our findings

21:46

reflections and uh offer new directions for for monuments which i will describe it in a little bit

21:54

the exhibition took place in pretty well every sector of the city we really thought it was really important to have

22:01

philadelphians or visitors to monument lab know their city in a bodily way by by

22:06

actually visiting many many areas of the city including some of the worst neighborhoods

22:12

in the city there’s actually two missing here uh further up on the person cursor and uh the region up here where

22:19

my cursor is is a very very very poor area very i would say very dangerous at night

22:26

you wouldn’t want to go there after dark and so on but i but i we felt it was very important to

22:31

um because they are philadelphians too they just happen to be very very poor and so on and um

22:38

we insisted on that and um you know some people said good luck on

22:44

on that but it really worked people we had buses we had people went up there and many of the people in the

22:50

in the in these neighborhoods at first were very skeptical of why we were there they said the city has never cared about

22:56

us the city is never heeded or called for anything and so we had a lot of meetings

23:01

we brought a lot of we had dance parties we had music we had events where uh we always

23:09

brought food for you know free food for a lot of people you know hundreds of families

23:14

and in fact and so on and over time we were embraced by by the neighborhoods

23:22

and this is the hub at the pennsylvania academy of fine arts and each of the images here

23:29

is a image from uh work of a prototype monument in the various parts of the city and the

23:34

black and white is a map of philadelphia and this is a work

23:40

by a monument to the new immigrant by uh the great cuban artist tanya bruguera and what she did

23:47

was and this is what we call a prototype monument it’s a monument which has a base that says monument to

23:53

the new immigrant it’s unfired plaster there’s a little simple wooden wire

24:00

armature underneath but because it’s unfired and because the exhibitor’s exhibition

24:05

was taking place in late summer over time it started to crack and come apart

24:11

and so that in the by the end of the exhibition all you had was basically the armature and she also um

24:19

eccentrically shaved off the face she didn’t want it to be identified racially or defined by a type

24:27

and it’s just of a child with a teddy bear and this was another work um

24:34

by olivia uh karen olivier uh the battle is joined in vernon park

24:40

which is a historically african-american uh neighborhood and there’s a monument underneath here

24:46

the battle of germantown this germantown originally was a german enclave not enclave by the german uh you

24:53

know ethnic german uh neighborhood and uh she concealed it with uh mirrors and it

25:00

became quite beautiful because you it actually disappears visually and you actually see

25:05

uh you know uh you get confused between where this the foliage ends and so on and it became very very

25:11

popular people every time there’s scuff marks on people there’s two two people of the neighborhood would go there

25:17

and and start polishing it and and so on and became quite loved in addition to

25:23

every site and you can see behind here there’s the karen olivier piece you can see it with my cursor here

25:30

but beside it or in proximity to it would be a monument lab container and the monument arm container

25:36

is where visitors who pass by we we would actually pay for students and young people to ask

25:43

visitors hi can we talk to you about monument lab and and then we would try to seek their uh

25:49

input to the question of what would be an appropriate monument

25:55

for the city of philadelphia at this moment in 2017. right we didn’t tell them uh we didn’t

26:02

say uh ideal we didn’t say uh you know give a budget we didn’t give any qualifiers

26:08

we just said what would be an appropriate monument and um and we had um over uh 200 000

26:15

respondents uh to this and i’ll speak about the data assessment uh later on and and very

26:23

often we would have events that took place um where all the leaves are for example we would have events often scheduling talks with

26:31

um including the mayor and uh and also a philadelphia eagles linebacker um you know uh the

26:39

police chief um the uh poet laureate and so on we have these events in these areas of

26:47

where normally would never have official events because they were either poor they were you know from slightly

26:52

neglected areas and so you know this is the idea you know

26:59

expanding the pedestal we quote from mccarran olivia here nonunions are about people they’re about

27:04

humanity or they should be they should reflect our humility humility and humbleness

27:10

the complexity of what it means to be human so find a monument that depicts a person in the circles above write down some of

27:17

the people who would have made this person’s work possible anyone who might have been associated

27:22

with them took care of them collaborated with them or or on whom they depended ask at least

27:29

one person to help you add to the list so these were the sorts of data prompts

27:34

that we would put forward to the public and we would also ask uh you know the

27:41

public using an old-fashioned sharpie pen on clipboard you know what is the an

27:47

appropriate monument for the current city of philadelphia and then we only asked um where would

27:52

you place the monument what’s the name of your monument what is your name what uh zip code do you live in which

27:58

neighborhood of uh philadelphia or the suburbs do you live in can you give us a sketch and and

28:04

so on and then we would start typologizing uh the monuments according to how many

28:09

said uh statuary form how many said uh you know ethereal form how many didn’t

28:16

offer a monument and just said no monuments we just need better schools like we did we counted everything as a possible

28:23

monument and um we involved a lot of neighborhood

28:29

children so this is uh uh king brett and only you know he’s a fantastic electronic uh musician king

28:36

britt and um he uh um you know was teaching uh these kids how to make

28:44

music how to make electronic music and they were you know he’s a kind of a star in in his area and so

28:50

everyone’s really excited and so on so we sponsored all these types of events literally

28:55

i can’t tell you how many brands we sponsor and i would you know we so the logistics was unbelievable

29:02

uh well here’s the uh tonya bargera again

29:07

and this is by canadian uh great artist um dwayne linklater who uh was actually in

29:14

my class at the bounce center and so and uh i thought this this kid you know is uh is so talented

29:22

and so on and i’ve been a big big fan of his and you know he just needed a break and you

29:28

know and um anyways he came up with this beautiful piece it’s a nocturnal piece it’s in neon it’s at pen treaty park

29:35

philadelphia was founded by william penn and uh at the site of uh this treaty

29:40

called the penn treaty he signed um william penn signed a

29:46

uh peace treaty with the lenin lenape uh chief chief tamin and uh of course chief

29:53

tammany didn’t write english and so we have to take uh william penn’s words for it but he wrote down that uh our friendship

30:01

and our trust will endure as long as the creeks and rivers flow

30:06

and the sun moon and and um stars endure so it’s a very moving piece

30:11

because of course uh the lenape were betrayed like many

30:17

native tribes were and nations were betrayed and so that’s what where it’s it’s poignant um and it’s a beautiful beautiful uh

30:24

work and the script is actually uh done in the handwriting of dwayne’s daughter

30:32

and this is another very beautiful piece by uh uh kaylee um um i just forget her name

30:40

now she’s gonna kill me if she’s on but anyways uh and what philadelphia is known as a a

30:47

city of masonry because a lot of brick town uh roll houses and if you’ve been to philadelphia you know

30:53

they’re famous for the front stoops these these kind of steps in stone and brick and uh

31:01

and people would sit in front of them and talk through the neighborhood talk to their neighbors and what we did

31:06

here was in washington square park because it’s actually contr it’s part of the national parks system

31:12

and so we contacted the national park system and we asked

31:18

whether we could remove the public benches there and uh and install these tubes that took

31:24

endless amounts of work to get permission and thank god we we did and it was so well used

31:32

there’s many more on the other side which you don’t see they were so well used that um by the time of the

31:38

end of monument lab people were writing in and calling into the national parks board

31:44

and asking whether the stoops could not be retained at least for this passageway of of the park because it was

31:52

just very touching in terms of the in terms of the reference and these tubes also

31:57

are affecting because they were recovered from um demolition yards because the city is

32:03

undergoing rapid rapid renovation there’s it’s population growth and

32:08

and uh after you know decades of decline but start uh just prior to the 2000s to today

32:16

there’s been an incredible boom in terms of the population and building and uh you know many of

32:22

these uh older uh row houses are being torn down to build newer homes and the newer ones won’t have stoops and so

32:28

on i just i just keep going people did performances on them

32:33

for example and i showed you sharon hayes piece

32:38

and this is mel chin’s piece we we also insisted that um a good at least uh

32:45

we wanted about half the artist invited to manual lab there’s about 30 that did performances and uh

32:53

another dozen that did prototype monuments we wanted about half the artist to be

32:58

from philadelphia or the philadelphia region right and we thought that was important

33:04

we also thought that it was very important that you know more than half were artists of

33:10

color and diversity to reflect the uh composition of the city itself and this

33:16

is by uh the great chinese-american artist mel chin and it’s called tumi and it’s a wordplay of course it’s

33:23

t-o-m-e but it’s also t-w-o-m-e and uh and everyone gets the

33:29

chance to come up these long uh walkways and to um and become a celebrity to

33:37

become me and uh people were standing on them taking selfies and so on but here you see someone

33:42

uh you know reading out a protest note we also had uh someone wheeled out an old lady wheeled

33:48

herself up you know someone helped her be wheeled into and then she actually pushed herself off

33:54

i should have maybe included the picture and stood up and and people were cheering her and so on

33:59

it became super super popular especially around from around um you know close to noon to about

34:05

4 p.m and so on people just were reading poetry some people were singing

34:10

and and so on and we had these events um all over the city this is by

34:17

uh uh uh olafer um uh emeka

34:24

um and uh ogbo a mecca ogbo a great nigerian artist and um it was a sound uh installation on

34:30

top of the philadelphia public library and so on so events would be taking place

34:36

and then we would just send out on uh social media the there’s an event taking place tonight and and and

34:42

so on and um again uh here’s hank willis thomas here i forgot who this is and um we we just

34:50

had a lot of events for talking about the city and people really became engaged in a

34:56

theorization and appreciation of the complexity of history of the city we had these kind of platforms uh in many of the areas of the

35:04

city and uh we would always have you know at least uh i think on the worst day we had about

35:09

30 people and that was a rainy day but generally it was like several hundred times and and so on like the

35:15

philadelphia eagles linebacker that was popular and and so we and we’ve been asking what’s

35:20

it like in philadelphia what do you think is wrong with the city right so it that was that

35:26

in a way was even more important than the the art so you know for monument lab and that’s

35:31

why i think it it registered so deeply with so many people and hank willis thomas is um you know

35:38

great power to the uh all people which is a black panthers slogan of a giant afro pick right and this was

35:45

done in proximity to a a statue of mayor former mayor rizzo who

35:50

was a real racist in his time in the 1970s and 80s

35:56

and the report uh to the city we uh came up with a little booklet in fact

36:01

wrote another essay paul wrote another essay and this is just give you an idea in terms of uh some of the data we had

36:08

12 proposed monuments to abolitionists 35 proposed monuments to the move bombing

36:13

the move bombing is something which the city to only recently uh it happened in 1985 several men

36:21

more than a dozen people killed you know six square blocks of city raised by by fire and uh

36:28

and uh and only recently uh did um the city apologized um because

36:34

uh and uh because of the walter um wallace um killing which is

36:41

coincidentally took place very close to where the move bombing was originally and so on so all this data

36:47

and then we would uh try to analyze the data and you can see here i hope you can see it this is sculptural form this is

36:54

interactive form this is these are just pages inside the report and so on and then all the dots are

37:00

where the respondents are from the zip codes the most common topics by

37:05

residents of city areas we tried every permutation of data presentation and in the end we

37:13

came out with a rather than a catalog we came up with a book called monument lab created speculations

37:19

for philadelphia we invited leading scholars such as kirk savage who’s written kind of amazing books on

37:26

our confederate monuments and so on to uh contribute essays david lee david brownlee

37:32

who is a distinguished architectural historian so it was quite heavy in terms of academics but it was

37:38

also uh you know a testament to the importance of knowledge production which

37:44

we’re seeking and more recently we’ve been branching out into many other cities

37:50

we are also branching out into uh europe we’ve got projects in uh munich we’ve got projects in antwerp

37:57

a project in amsterdam um and so on and uh we’ve been uh since uh the exhibition we have been

38:04

working on projects in los angeles newark memphis

38:10

new orleans st louis chicago baltimore cleveland

38:17

portland oregon los angeles and another you know dozen

38:24

american cities toronto and also vancouver contacted us as well and so we asked the same

38:32

question how would you map the monuments of st louis and we were we were gathering all the data

38:37

and so on we think it’s really important to have a publication arm accompanying this that’s user

38:43

friendly that uh that is not uh you know overloaded with the complex language and

38:50

so on and uh so i kind of showed you this earlier but these were the sorts of

38:55

things uh layers of the past 10 years ago what was here 50 years ago 100 years 400 years right

39:01

so a methodology for kids and adults to confront history

39:07

and very recently we uh the melon foundation the andrew w mellon

39:13

foundation launched a um uh 200 million dollar

39:18

uh initiative to um you know for new monuments uh during

39:24

this moment of monuments reckoning and um they wanted uh and we were the test case

39:31

monument lab was cited by the mellon foundation as as the most relevant organization

39:36

dealing with this uh we were covering the new york times that said that

39:42

we had the most relevant um instagram uh website of of

39:48

of any uh other uh ngo at this moment in time and they awarded us four

39:55

million u.s dollars um to uh work on this and we’ve just been uh contacted very recently in fact last

40:03

week by the george soros foundation and so on so we’ve become quite big already and we’ve have

40:08

a fellows program and so on it all started with you know a little conversation i had with paul

40:14

in 2012. i just want to just come to a conclusion here and say that

40:19

we also have a monument studio we made a proposal to uh richmond virginia in terms of what to do

40:26

with the confederate monuments on monument avenue you know which are full of uh four

40:32

confederate generals on on horses and this one is the removing stonewall jackson

40:40

and so our idea was to um uh not remove it yet but to um you know uh impart uh

40:47

play with it and we we had the idea that each of the generals would be in the mid of a in the midst of a

40:54

equestrian accident and this is just one example stonewall jackson flying off his

40:59

horse right so we’re always kind of playing off these ideas of you know what sort of creative responses

41:05

can we can we carry out before removal and we think it’s very important

41:10

to have some dialogue before it gets removable i think the worst thing not maybe not the worst thing but not a

41:16

good thing would be just to remove something in the stealth of night no dialogue and then next morning you wake up and

41:24

the problematic monument is removed and there’s no dialogue and just i’ll end it with this um one

41:31

because it’s it goes to the heart of uh what we are we’re very interested in in monument lab

41:37

i’m using this because it’s also a canadian example in queenston heights the uh isaac brock general isaac brock

41:44

memorial the column um meters tall of limestone

41:51

very typical you know heroic and and general brock is is is standing atop this column

41:58

and um and uh you know and as many of you know he he was heroic in the battle of 1812

42:07

but as many of you will probably i hope also know he uh even that when he was dying he

42:13

said you know there needs to be equal acknowledgement of his friend chief tecumseh for which

42:19

the battle would not have been won without the wilyness of chief tecumseh

42:25

and of course when the war ended um there was talks about uh recognition of

42:30

general brock but chief tecumseh was all but forgotten and so this uh was erected about 1856 or

42:39

something like that uh you know more than uh 40 years after the war of 1812 and there was no recognition

42:45

to this day of chief tecumseh now if you look at my cursor here at the very bottom

42:52

that was put up by we presume native uh first nations um

42:58

people to honor chief tecumseh and uh there’s actually a little picture of chief chief tecumseh right here

43:04

it was put up in the mid 1980s nobody really knows who put it up um it would fall down and become

43:11

weathered and then it would be replaced initially it was removed a few times by

43:16

the uh parks superintendents i guess and then it would be put up again and now it’s recognized as

43:23

the chief tecumseh monument and it’s i’ll show you another picture and it’s

43:30

and uh what we’re very interested in is how this highly provisional highly vulnerable

43:37

monument made up of twigs and ribbons and such um

43:44

speaks truth to power in terms of first nation status relative to white status and how this very modest

43:53

triangulated piece of of work actually subsumes the energy

44:01

of the 200 almost 200 feet tall isaac brock monument so i’ll just

44:07

conclude it with uh with that and uh thanks very much

44:16

thanks ken that was great i really one of the things i really love about your work is uh somebody who works in a museum all

44:22

their life is is the fact that people regular folks that may not know a lot about contemporary

44:28

art really get the work itself but just before i talk about your work uh it’s specifically

44:34

i want to just carry on a little boat of this this whole notion of removal of monuments and because we had

44:40

an issue here in victoria where it was a statue of john a macdonald not city hall and uh

44:45

i mean he has a very tenuous connection to the city he never sting was never here even though he was a member of

44:51

parliament from victoria but uh it was removed and taken away and it seemed the action of removal seemed to coalesce

44:58

a lot of kind of very scary right-wing people to get together and and complain

45:04

about the destruction of that history i wonder if you can talk just a little bit more about that whole notion of uh

45:09

removal well as i i alluded to i don’t think uh removal should take place

45:15

before there’s actually um input from creative types from thinkers

45:23

from intellectuals and from public dialogue i think there has to be has to be that right but i also think

45:31

that um uh you know

45:36

there’s a lot of statues that deserve to be removed i’m not saying they don’t deserve to remove because they are an affront to

45:42

all kinds of people i mean look at the gassy jack statue in vancouver which i think most canadians know about

45:49

right he was a pedophile he he was abusive to mostly native uh women and

45:56

uh and so on right and so he deserves to be removed right and and yet you have

46:02

these people that say well you know they uh the monument they feel like their entire cosmology is

46:08

threatened because something because they’re not willing to uh you know accept

46:14

change right because things are very good and unfortunately i don’t have a real good answer to that

46:19

i think when you know you’re going to have these kind of

46:25

you know counter these kind of reactionary responses no matter what but i think there has to be a as

46:31

inclusive and why the dialogue before that point i think the danger is not so much even

46:36

the reactionary groups of course they’re dangerous but the maybe the you know

46:43

great section in the middle that can be persuaded by that by the argument of the

46:48

reactionary groups and that’s why i think it’s really a challenge but i think it’s really important to have dialogue in terms of

46:55

what really did happen what what does christopher columbus really uh embody for example christopher

47:02

columbus by his second voyage had uh had uh enslaved 400

47:08

native uh uh native americans i guess i call me native people by his second

47:13

voyage right and and why did he take on the task he took on the task for money

47:20

right and and uh and who was the sponsor of christopher columbus it was ferdinand

47:25

and isabella and who were ferdinand and isabella well they were the prosecutors of a thing called the

47:32

spanish inquisition where literally millions of native people died in

47:37

central and south america right so i think these sorts of things need to be

47:43

explicitly announced and uh and uh and i think too many people don’t

47:48

know much about the histories i think if they did they would it knowing more about the history is

47:54

actually enriching you actually i you know it’s actually you appreciate things even more right and

48:00

and so it doesn’t make sense to me why people would be so uh afraid of knowing more

48:10

um i’ll guess i’ll follow it you know going i guess to me what’s so interesting about monument lab is that

48:16

artists are at the heart of it um and artists you know when so much of the project um is about

48:24

creative speculation and then sort of imagining alternatives um

48:29

and that’s been such a you know it’s a long-standing part of architectural projects but not so much when we think

48:35

about art practice um can you talk about how you see that creative speculation in relationship to

48:42

the transformation of public landscapes and especially as monument lab kind of

48:47

you know begins to work at this national level um you know how you already like

48:53

philadelphia it was you can even tell from the images how kind of um complex the the project was right how

49:00

many layers how do you do that how do you sort of um scale up to a national level with these with artists at the heart of it

49:08

right well artists are well i would say the esprit of art is at the heart of it maybe not

49:14

necessarily artists because paul farber is an academic paul farber is an academic that who

49:19

thinks like an artist and i and maybe this is not right way to put it but i’m an artist who kind of

49:25

thinks often academically as well because i write and and and and and you

49:31

know jury obligations and so on and so um creative speculation is just

49:38

means um you know not being so fixated on the rules of what constitutes a

49:45

monument right what constitutes a monument is to you know con the idea that it projects consensus

49:53

in terms of the narrative that you can and it’s also indisputable the consensus is that

49:59

this person is represented surely is important and we cannot dispute the importance and

50:04

we cannot dispute even or even question the values embodied by this statute right and that

50:12

the values are eternal and they’re and there’s some sense of of

50:17

permanence uh to them right and and the consensus of course is singular

50:22

right failing to recognize the multi-ethnic multiracial multi-class multi

50:29

whatever distinctions that make up any public corpus and um

50:36

and so the creative speculations is about teasing out that very confined fixed

50:42

idea of a monument to speculate on what other forms can it take and also test out those other forms

50:52

to see how effective they are right and so on rather than to just go into

50:58

account default mode of assuming that you know this is this is um

51:04

this is what a monument is it has to be in marvel it has to be in bronze and so on by the way one of the things

51:10

about uh you know the idea of a permanence for monuments is um it is actually a fiction

51:17

the permanence of monument is only is only projected as pertinent because

51:22

there’s so much administration and so much capital put into maintaining them right if if it’s a bronze stature even

51:29

the marble statue that would corrode if you didn’t clean it twice a year at least if you didn’t make sure that the weep

51:35

holes weren’t properly uh still there and not plugged and so on so

51:40

you know we tend to think of these this idea of permanence only because it always looks permanent

51:46

but that’s actually a kind of a you know function of uh you know of uh

51:52

civic uh you know desire to put capital into and muscle into

51:57

maintaining it there was a talk i think you gave last january i saw a reference to

52:03

the title was um the trouble with monuments and i was thinking about you know you

52:08

mentioned this period of like monument reckoning that’s taken place this year um you know and i guess you know one of

52:16

the things we kind of forget even the history before this period but you know the kind of thinking about um conversations

52:22

about monuments and colonialism and racism and erasure have been going on you know for

52:28

some time i’m wondering just given the last you know eight months um has it changed your thinking about

52:35

the trouble with monuments has it has it has no it’s well it’s own i would say it’s

52:40

uh affirmed our thinking uh because you know we started monumental 2012 and uh we were already um you know

52:48

doing all kinds of smaller projects which i didn’t uh get into here we had some smaller bits of funding we’re doing doing all kinds of the

52:54

experiments in the city and um before the kind of folk more more fully

53:01

fledged version of monument lab and um you know by the time so we were getting

53:07

started to get recognized and people were going wow when when this monuments moment came about in the past

53:13

year and or and a half people said wow you guys are so preachy and how did

53:18

you know right and paul and i laughed about this all the time because we said to each other we thought we were late

53:25

right and the only i would say the only thing we did that was different was that we formalized a um you know

53:32

a kind of a entity of an epis uh steam uh generating entity

53:39

uh that was uh centered on and focused on you know the comportment of monuments

53:45

the operations of monuments and and and tying it to questions of power

53:50

and the in the uneven application of power and it and in terms of the question of who’s

53:55

seen who’s not seen who’s hurt who’s not hurt so that’s what we did we formalized that and no one had ever done

54:00

that before like we now have probably about two

54:06

dozen people in monument can i want to talk a little about uh some of your work your your work

54:12

and yeah we started off with uh with the that image of the melechum piece and uh

54:17

it was installed on the on the exterior of the building when you showed at the minute of it in 1989 and it was it was there for several

54:25

years and then they took it down to clean it and there was people complaining that the piece was missing uh did that

54:30

surprise you yeah no well it was put up in 1990 to coincide with my exhibition

54:36

at the witwit right the first iteration was that the winnipeg art galleries you may remember and then um and the idea was

54:43

that there was there was a it was a former uh it’s there’s a kind of laneway on the side of the building

54:50

and there used to be an advertising billboard on the side right and so they kept the frame for the

54:55

billboard right but of course no they didn’t want to it to serve for the purposes of advertising and so

55:02

um they came up they approached me uh just you know when i uh arrived in rotterdam they said you know

55:08

we we decided to keep this frame here we used to have a billboard and we’re gonna just announce the

55:14

uh show right and so uh you know and they even showed me the layout and they said

55:20

we just need an image in the background they’ll say your name the dates and uh you know when the special talks

55:26

will be and and so on right and uh i said sure that’s great right and then it would

55:31

coincide with the length of the show it would come down and the next artist showing would have uh you know a

55:37

new poster up for whatever reasons i don’t have no idea why but for whatever reasons i

55:42

i woke up next day i walked to the museum we’re still installing and then i said

55:48

how about just an image of work without any of the other information right and uh and they said which one and

55:54

they said melisha hates their job you know it wasn’t like i had any plans i just said that

56:00

and they thought it over and they said sure fine and then when the exhibition came down it was so it wasn’t years but when the

56:06

exhibition came down three months later they took down the billboard right

56:12

as as i expected them to i was already back in canada and um two weeks uh later um after it

56:19

came down i received a call from the width of it right soon to be called the melee kunst institute art institute and um

56:26

they said um oh uh there’s been an uproar here uh citizens uh in the in the vicinity of

56:34

with the vid are demanding that the uh billboard be put back up i said really what why is this it was

56:41

just so strange right and then he said well the best way i can put it is that one lady said every city deserves a

56:48

monument to people who hate their jobs right and so and i’m not making this up right it’s

56:54

too delicious i don’t have that type of imagination and so um they they said we think we

57:00

could put it back up and i said great i remember being totally thrilled by it and it’s been up since right and it’s

57:06

become uh you know immense kind of selfie side uh hundreds of flickr uh you know pages

57:15

facebook group melody sean hates her job group um and so on and it’s now it’s been for many years uh

57:22

one of the uh asterisks in terms of things to see in rotterdam which is in it which is a rotterdam tourist board

57:29

which is i’m really proud of and happy about but it had nothing you know i certainly didn’t anticipate it and now

57:35

with the uh what makes it very delicious is that as i mentioned earlier the width of it

57:43

the the museum was named after width of it only because it’s on mittovic meaning it’s on width of its street it

57:49

had it was because at that time in 1990 it was actually a less than desirable

57:55

area of the city it was also seen as a little bit far not of course nowadays it’s in the

58:00

middle it’s like hit hipsterville and so on and so what happened was um

58:06

uh you know with this monument uh reckoning there was a movement to rename with it because with

58:13

the vit was uh engaged in practice of slave trading through the company worked for which was

58:19

east india the dutch east india company and after two years of um you know input with with the

58:27

citizens and stuff they they came to they called me up they and i had no input on this by the way

58:34

they called they said is it okay to we want the city wants to na rename the museum the mallee art

58:41

institute so it’s a kind of a cherry on top in terms of my interest in monuments

58:48

just john and i were talking about how there’s like definitely a through line from this earlier work to what you’re

58:55

doing now and when you look at that work which um did become sort of a monument

59:00

um or anti-monument um and even the work that’s you know like

59:06

the strip mall signage for example series do you think about those signs

59:12

even as in terms of like monuments you might not have at the time but

59:19

i don’t think about them as monuments but i do think about um what i’m what i’m really interested

59:24

in is i could look at a very problematic monument for example i could look at a a monument of uh you know

59:33

of uh ryerson right ryerson’s like a proponent of residential schools ryerson university

59:40

right and um and i look at and i can look at the negative histories associated with

59:46

with this depiction so i’m interested in looking at the kind of negative spaces i’m talking about the dark negative

59:52

spaces that’s that’s discernible but maybe not apparent

59:57

there and that’s that’s something i’ve always been interested in in my art so like the i’m always

1:00:03

interested in the kind of um you know the kind of uh you know how subjectivity

1:00:08

uh deeper down can be gleaned from uh like shopkeeper signs and and how it has

1:00:14

to be somehow reconciled or maybe not with uh with public decorum and and so

1:00:19

on and in a way that’s that’s the same kind of uh you know issue of comportment that i find um with the public statuary

1:00:29

i mean i could uh can i just quickly show you share my screen again and show you two no uh more works

1:00:36

um because i not these but i just want to show you

1:00:44

like sorry so here you see so this is it’s not a monument it’s totally

1:00:49

fictitious this is like nine uh three meters wide so it’s quite very big it’s a fake sign so to speak

1:00:56

but it’s also real and this is what i’m interested in so metro falls town center plaza largest shopping center in the

1:01:02

northlands and then it’s like this is this town’s dying you know save our jobs and so on i’m

1:01:08

very interested in these in these conflicts these agonisms

1:01:13

of uh you know the capitalist economy where the entire town uh you know is is actually obviously a

1:01:19

beautiful waterfall i made up the name but beautiful waterfall and so on and uh it’s dying

1:01:26

so i’m interested in all these sorts of things which are forgotten towns forgotten constituencies

1:01:32

you know people who live in smaller uh areas and one one company towns and so on

1:01:39

uh maybe i’ll just show you this one because it’s uh is so i’ll just read you this this is

1:01:45

like from a necrology work i did and um and interested in in these kind of something that’s true

1:01:51

so monuments are interested in peeling back the fictions the fictional

1:01:57

layers right to what is true so in this work here um which is written in the style of you know 19th

1:02:04

century language which took a long while practice believe me the most unfortunate case of lucy chonos

1:02:11

santos convicted of smuggling heroin into indonesia whose mistake was to fall victim to a

1:02:18

phone to a phony employment recruiter who fronted for an international drug gang and later threatened to kill lucy’s

1:02:24

family if she refused to do as the gang demanded follow her story from growing up in a shanty

1:02:30

on the edge of manila where she supported her parents and siblings by retrieving value from garbage

1:02:36

to burying a child at a tender age of whom she was separated for several years as she sat on death row awaiting

1:02:42

execution by firing squad passing her days in a squalid and overcrowded prison

1:02:48

to this is offered the particularities of her finality including the many press stories legal

1:02:53

and diplomatic documents and the many affecting and heart-rending letters to her son

1:02:58

written a short time prior to her demise all pressed from the originals of her own

1:03:04

handwriting so i’m really kind of and this is this is not a true true story but it’s but it has

1:03:09

truth in it and it’s a compilation distillation of uh things i’ve encountered when i was

1:03:14

living in charge for example and i read some horrible stories about filipino uh

1:03:20

workers there and their mistreatment and even their execution and so on so i’m interested in these

1:03:26

kind of underlying stories and well and uh here’s here’s a

1:03:31

i’ll just show you this last one this is the work that’s being made actually this uh this is uh a mirror so right

1:03:39

it’s hard to represent here so that’s why it has to be a mock-up and this is a beautiful landscape which is printed in highly high resolution ink

1:03:47

onto the mirror this is about uh two meters by two meters and uh this is the landscape of little

1:03:54

big horn where general calc custer’s last stand right and so you know i’m always interested in

1:04:01

history i’m interested in subjectivities i’ve been interested in forgotten uh you know truth and so on so that’s

1:04:08

that’s um that’s how they connect with uh my interest in in monuments i’m interested in space as

1:04:14

well right the space of civility the speed the the the idea of a polity uh you know um the ideal urban

1:04:23

space and so on i know you actually um partnered or

1:04:28

participated in architectural um uh teams to work on architectural projects

1:04:34

one in toronto uh one in edmonton my bridge project i was wondering about

1:04:41

sort of like your interest in kind of this um like social space and how in those kinds of projects were

1:04:47

there more formal architectures and not um kind of artistic uh inspired

1:04:52

projects how do you are you able to sort of bring these sort of ideas about justice social justice and social

1:04:59

and spatial justice together in those kinds of projects well i mean it’s a different it’s a

1:05:05

different uh kind of worms because uh it’s much more client oriented right i’m not so client oriented

1:05:11

when you’re in art but i do try to bring in um shifts i i i think it’s important for

1:05:17

artists to be uh involved in infrastructure projects i i always accept when

1:05:22

when it’s possible the other advantage of course is that you know they charge by the hour you know like

1:05:28

and it’s it’s kind of amazing so i remember doing one maybe i shouldn’t say this and

1:05:34

they said how much do you charge for an hour per hour i said hour i don’t charge anything by

1:05:39

an hour and they said come on how much do you charge right and uh i said 50 bucks and then

1:05:47

then they kind of looked at each other the architect with the uh other city guys they said okay how about 200 it’s 200 okay

1:05:55

i had no idea and then of course i went back to my hotel and went if if they’re offering me

1:06:00

200 so easily what are they making for but i think it’s really important right

1:06:06

i mean one of the ironies is that in edmonton i came up with a proposal called the buffalo and the buffalo fur trader right

1:06:14

and um it was supposed to be cited on either end of the uh of this new bridge called the walter

1:06:20

dale bridge across the north saskatchewan river they built a kind of um arcane passorel pedestrian bridge

1:06:27

attached to the vehicular bridge and uh the idea was that as you cross from one

1:06:32

side to the other side because as you know uh edmonton’s bifurcated north south

1:06:38

between staff trafficking or formerly stratagona and uh and downtown edmonton and then you would on one way

1:06:45

you’d see this and a statue uh it’s not a statue but it’s a a

1:06:50

of a man and a mustache and had it and uh perch atop a pile of uh buffalo pelts it’s a

1:06:56

very famous picture uh you know at the during the height of the destruction of the

1:07:02

of the bison and so on and uh you know and i wanted the guy this basically uh symbolize what’s what’s

1:07:09

still going on the rapaciousness of of nature of for money of

1:07:14

of human exploitation for money and so on and then on the other side would be you

1:07:19

know the wisdom the sagacious uh knowledge that’s uh offered by native people

1:07:25

by the buffalo and they look at each other they’re they’re the buffalo stands on the high rock and the

1:07:31

man sits at a pile of uh pelts i had and i went through every

1:07:37

engagement uh process neighborhood engagement engagement with

1:07:42

every um you know native group the city told me to see everything went fine right but then um

1:07:47

recently for whatever reasons they said we we fear that this work will be

1:07:53

misrecognized and misread as colonial and i said how so and um they said well

1:08:00

you understand i said no i don’t understand and so i then i more even more recently i received a

1:08:06

letter saying uh the city is not proceeding with the installation of your work so

1:08:11

it’s sitting rotting in some in some outdoor storage you know several hundred thousand

1:08:17

dollars um we have a couple questions here um

1:08:22

one from terry uh can the development process you employed for monument lab makes me think

1:08:28

of david simon’s creative process especially for treme his love letter to new orleans in terms of engaging the

1:08:34

community and erasing some of the artificial divisions between creative professionals

1:08:41

and the people characters and stories they are realizing

1:08:46

has this project engaged any tv film or live theater creators in terms of translating the experience

1:08:52

or learnings into narrative forms for popular media that is clearly right for the kinds of

1:08:57

stories that really take place in the public imagination well um what we did get uh

1:09:06

was uh contacted by vice media and they want to do a whole series of monument lab and so

1:09:13

we’re working on that right now where we you know uh either paula myself will go to a different city and and uh and

1:09:20

you know we’ll obviously have prep done before going to that city and uh and then we’re not like visiting um you know

1:09:27

like in uh in uh decatur mississippi for our example and visiting where the three

1:09:34

uh you know jewish freedom fighters were murdered you know before selma

1:09:39

alabama and so on so happen and um and talk about monuments there so this

1:09:45

you know it’s being we didn’t pitch it was this it was vice media contacted us about

1:09:51

having uh having a show about this i did great so we’ve done we’ve done lots of

1:09:57

podcasts webinars and uh you know interviews on washington washington post and

1:10:03

new yorker magazine did a huge huge uh you know 15-page profile

1:10:10

amazing um so we have another question this is from andrew building on these ideas i’m curious but

1:10:16

this is about the methyl falls piece um building on these ideas i’m curious as to your thoughts and the relationship

1:10:22

between problematic monuments and problematic etymology of place names and how these things are related or

1:10:28

where they differ well they are related because they’re both problematic

1:10:34

i mean i can i often cite the story of um you know the schools i went to you know

1:10:40

admiral seymour lord selker uh you know uh prime minister gladstone all three are

1:10:47

you know problematic brits you know let’s put that way you know and uh admiral seymour for

1:10:53

example uh i went to and uh you know i grew up in near chinatown and it’s just uh

1:10:58

east of chinatown this school and um you know at the time it was probably

1:11:04

about 60 cantonese chinese children you know another 20 were native but

1:11:10

about 60 percent uh cantonese chinese children right because at that time the chinese diaspora was mostly

1:11:16

cantonese southern chinese and uh and so i remember um you know

1:11:22

in my teen years long after leaving uh admiral seymour because of elementary school i i decided one day

1:11:29

i should research through admiral seymour’s i don’t know why i just and it turns out he was a lieutenant so

1:11:36

to speak uh a you know right-hand man of lord elgin in the um defeat of china in the opium

1:11:43

war he was instrumental in the prosecuting of the bombardment

1:11:49

of the of canton harbor in the opium war right and so i’m going wow okay i i went

1:11:55

to the school named admiral seymour 60 were cantonese children

1:12:00

and this is the guy that basically bombed and killed a lot of cantonese in the opium war you know so it’s just

1:12:07

you know i think we should know about these things you know children should know about these things adults should know about

1:12:12

these things so in a way it’s they overlap greatly there’s a lot of cities that don’t have

1:12:18

a lot of monuments or statuary for example like los angeles we work with los

1:12:23

angeles but there they have a lot of problematic names you know and they also have a lot of um

1:12:29

erasures of of sites let’s take it take a look at the san diego chicano park right why did

1:12:36

chicano park come about it exists underneath an expressway because this chicano neighborhood that

1:12:42

was there historically was torn down to extend the next expressway and so they made a park of the space

1:12:49

underneath it’s noisy because there’s cars above and so on right so these sorts of things

1:12:55

and or even um dodger stadium in los angeles you know that was a it was a chicano

1:13:02

neighborhood right they are cities often will uh in the name of putting up stadiums or

1:13:07

renovating an area uh like vancouver right they wanted to extend the freeway

1:13:12

through chinatown one time right they started doing it and they and they took out uh hogan’s alley

1:13:18

the only black area of vancouver right and that’s africa in halifax

1:13:25

i mean that’s so you know a lot of places have problematic names mcgill university mcgill was like a

1:13:32

slave owner you know so these things need to be uh known and uh and discussed i like the idea

1:13:41

you know that you talked about the need for conversation and dialogue before they change so that we don’t lose

1:13:48

the memory right so it’s a different kind of remembering no i think i think it should be front and center of uh public education

1:13:54

i’m not talking about you know over emphasizing over determining uh histories to the point

1:14:00

whereby it becomes a little bit exaggerated right and like a hammer to a

1:14:05

nail i’m thinking about things that you know are true but i also think one another problem in

1:14:12

terms of the statuary or monument problematic monument out there is that there’s a dearth

1:14:18

of monuments that recognize the underrepresented right right so you have lots of uh

1:14:23

confederate monuments and let’s just take aside the confederate monument let’s just say that

1:14:29

they they’re they’ve all been banished you still have tons of business types of tons of white men tons

1:14:35

of equestrian monuments but you have very few monuments you know despite the

1:14:40

enormity of the of the slave enterprise you have very few monuments to uh the

1:14:46

auction blocks to the nooses where they did hanging of uh african-americans i mean that type of

1:14:54

example or what about in canada with the first nations and indigenous

1:14:59

uh peoples you know where are the monuments to uh the children who died in residential

1:15:05

schools where are these monuments there’s there’s so there’s there’s such a kind of disequilibrium

1:15:10

in terms of the monuments and statuary inventory that’s there and and the kind of absence of

1:15:17

of of depiction of the traumatic histories that that are

1:15:23

embodied by the dominant history and then i think we start to like your question about what is a

1:15:29

monument you know like residential schools like the um the woodland cultural center the site of

1:15:34

the mohawk residential school becomes you know the building itself becomes a monument

1:15:40

right like architecture is monument in some ways it’s um you know their project called save

1:15:46

the evidence right this actually protect the structure itself and what was in it basically um

1:15:52

to to create that’s only that’s only one part of the uh what needs to be done of course that

1:15:58

should be saved because we should remember those things right but it all but it should also be part of

1:16:03

a larger package of you know public education

1:16:08

genuine uh seeking of dialogue with first nations and aboriginal peoples

1:16:14

genuine i mean since harper’s apology i can’t say that the conditions of

1:16:21

native life has advanced all that much you know it’s still i mean look

1:16:27

look at all this look at all the terrible things i follow canada all the time the native chief in in northern alberta

1:16:35

who’d beaten up the wife was uh beaten up right by the rcmp or uh what happened in

1:16:42

uh montreal in quebec in the hospital right another native uh woman

1:16:48

um you know there’s so many stories it’s you know it’s unbelievable and this is this is i’m only speaking

1:16:54

about the last three months yeah you know so no exactly

1:17:01

i think once we reconcile all these we will never be fully reconciled but once we start addressing these things

1:17:07

then um you know things are uh

1:17:12

you know the nation becomes richer it doesn’t become poor we’re not taking

1:17:18

away anything we’re not taking away the you know uh histories and and so on we’re saying there

1:17:23

needs to be better balance yeah and i think that’s that’s the key point the i think that’s

1:17:30

what monument lab is doing so well um there’s a thank you here from uh by

1:17:35

brian hetrick uh thanks ken lum for your presentation on monument lab um and insights on civic landscapes and

1:17:42

architecture um i’d like to thank you too i think monument lab and your work is so inspiring

1:17:48

um and it’s this conversation has been very inspiring too um john do you have any further

1:17:56

questions oh there’s lots of uh lots of lots of possible potential questions but

1:18:02

uh i’ll leave it at that so i think it’s been a very good very good presentation it’s great to see you again ken and uh

1:18:09

see what you’re doing ken and thank you john for joining us um and i think just uh you know really

1:18:16

important ideas we’re leaving with about official and non-official memory and what’s possible um i think monument lab just gives us a

1:18:23

sense of what is possible in the scale it’s possible at i think that’s you know tremendous achievement

1:18:28

and um really appreciate you joining us this evening yeah my pleasure take care everyone

1:18:35

have a good night and thank you to our audience for joining us as well

No results found