A virtual conversation with Ken Lum (artist and Chief Curatorial Advisor for Monument Lab), Jon Tupper (Director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria), and Shauna McCabe (Director of the Art Gallery of Guelph).
In 2012, Lum founded Monument Lab with Paul Farber with the goal to cultivate and facilitate critical conversations around the past, present, and future of monuments. A public art and history studio, Monument Lab aims to engage our inherited symbols in order to unearth the next generation of monuments that elevate stories of resistance and hope.
Currently Chair of the Department of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, Lum was formerly Head of the Graduate Program in Studio Art at the University of British Columbia, Visiting Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and Graduate Professor at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College. Lum was made a Guggenheim Fellow in 1999 and awarded a Killam Award for Outstanding Research in 1998 and the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award in 2007.A virtual conversation with Ken Lum (artist and Chief Curatorial Advisor for Monument Lab), Jon Tupper (Director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria), and Shauna McCabe (Director of the Art Gallery of Guelph).
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Key moments
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Stuart Weitzman
Stuart Weitzman
2:39
Stuart Weitzman
2:39
Statue of John Wallamaker
Statue of John Wallamaker
10:07
Statue of John Wallamaker
10:07
The Prototype Monument
The Prototype Monument
21:09
The Prototype Monument
21:09
Prototype Monument
Prototype Monument
23:30
Prototype Monument
23:30
The Battle of Germantown
The Battle of Germantown
24:45
The Battle of Germantown
24:45
Removing Stonewall Jackson
Removing Stonewall Jackson
40:37
Removing Stonewall Jackson
40:37
Sponsor of Christopher Columbus
Sponsor of Christopher Columbus
47:22
Sponsor of Christopher Columbus
47:22
What Constitutes a Monument
What Constitutes a Monument
49:44
What Constitutes a Monument
49:44
Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript.
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
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onto the mirror this is about uh two meters by two meters and uh this is the landscape of little
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big horn where general calc custer’s last stand right and so you know i’m always interested in
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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
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space and so on i know you actually um partnered or
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participated in architectural um uh teams to work on architectural projects
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one in toronto uh one in edmonton my bridge project i was wondering about
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sort of like your interest in kind of this um like social space and how in those kinds of projects were
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there more formal architectures and not um kind of artistic uh inspired
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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
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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
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artists to be uh involved in infrastructure projects i i always accept when
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when it’s possible the other advantage of course is that you know they charge by the hour you know like
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and it’s it’s kind of amazing so i remember doing one maybe i shouldn’t say this and
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they said how much do you charge for an hour per hour i said hour i don’t charge anything by
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an hour and they said come on how much do you charge right and uh i said 50 bucks and then
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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
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i had no idea and then of course i went back to my hotel and went if if they’re offering me
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200 so easily what are they making for but i think it’s really important right
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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
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and um it was supposed to be cited on either end of the uh of this new bridge called the walter
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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
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side to the other side because as you know uh edmonton’s bifurcated north south
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between staff trafficking or formerly stratagona and uh and downtown edmonton and then you would on one way
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you’d see this and a statue uh it’s not a statue but it’s a a
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of a man and a mustache and had it and uh perch atop a pile of uh buffalo pelts it’s a
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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
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still going on the rapaciousness of of nature of for money of
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of human exploitation for money and so on and then on the other side would be you
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know the wisdom the sagacious uh knowledge that’s uh offered by native people
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by the buffalo and they look at each other they’re they’re the buffalo stands on the high rock and the
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man sits at a pile of uh pelts i had and i went through every
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engagement uh process neighborhood engagement engagement with
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every um you know native group the city told me to see everything went fine right but then um
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recently for whatever reasons they said we we fear that this work will be
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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
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letter saying uh the city is not proceeding with the installation of your work so
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it’s sitting rotting in some in some outdoor storage you know several hundred thousand
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dollars um we have a couple questions here um
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one from terry uh can the development process you employed for monument lab makes me think
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of david simon’s creative process especially for treme his love letter to new orleans in terms of engaging the
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community and erasing some of the artificial divisions between creative professionals
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and the people characters and stories they are realizing
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has this project engaged any tv film or live theater creators in terms of translating the experience
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or learnings into narrative forms for popular media that is clearly right for the kinds of
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stories that really take place in the public imagination well um what we did get uh
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was uh contacted by vice media and they want to do a whole series of monument lab and so
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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
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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
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alabama and so on so happen and um and talk about monuments there so this
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you know it’s being we didn’t pitch it was this it was vice media contacted us about
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having uh having a show about this i did great so we’ve done we’ve done lots of
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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
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between problematic monuments and problematic etymology of place names and how these things are related or
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where they differ well they are related because they’re both problematic
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i mean i can i often cite the story of um you know the schools i went to you know
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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
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about 60 cantonese chinese children you know another 20 were native but
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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