Monument Lab Town Hall: Shaping the Past

Monument Lab, the public art and history project led by Weitzman faculty member Paul Farber and co-founded by Ken Lum, Marilyn Jordan Presidential Professor and chair of fine arts, presents Monument Lab Town Hall, exploring new models and practices for how we might shape the past in public spaces.

Supported in part by the Center for Public Art and Space, this year’s Monument Lab Town Hall annual conference goes virtual and transnational, facilitating pressing conversations around what, whom, and how to remember in public spaces across the globe. This year’s symposium kicks off Shaping the Past, a collaborative project in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb).

On October 8 and 9 (12-3pm EST), Monument Lab Town Hall explores new models and practices for how we might shape the past in ways that continue to confront legacies of racist, sexist, and colonial systems of knowledge and to strengthen democracy through public spaces. Such efforts include community organization and civic engagement tactics that include multiple publics in these monumental matters. The Town Hall features a series of four keynote conversations and video presentations from artists/activists working across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Germany. Across two days of conversations, curators, writers, artists, and activists will think together about memory work across borders, the relationship between art and activism. Monument Lab Town Hall will explore critical and creative practices we might need towards monumental justice, education, and care.

Confirmed Keynote Participants include Paul Ramírez Jonas, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Seph Rodney, Daniela Schiller, Jasmine Wahi, Mabel Wilson, Mirjam Zadoff

Video Presentations from the 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellows: Hadi Al Khatib, Ulf Aminde, Tomie Arai, Sergio Beltrán-García, Thalia Fernández Bustamente, MADAD (Damon Davis, Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and De Nichols), Ada Pinkston, Quentin VerCetty, Alisha B. Wormsley, Patrick Weems

Opening Performance: Curated by Arielle Julia Brown (Founder and Director, Black Spatial Relics)