Counter-Monuments and Para-Monuments. Contested Memory in Public Space

Since the Black Lives Matter movement at the latest, public memory has been highly contested again: Around the world, activists are toppling monuments, demanding the renaming of streets, intervening in historical narratives and imagining other memorials. Based on a seminar by Michaela Melián and Nora Sternfeld in the summer semester of 2021, the conference at the HFBK Hamburg deals with debates about monuments in public space and the associated aesthetics and politics of memory. The aim is to bring together different forms of knowledge as well as artistic and activist strategies from the fields of anti-fascist memory politics, anti-racist memorial demands and decolonial iconoclasms. In the process, we also encounter discourses and practices of a contested memorial culture in Germany, which was highly reflexive in the 1990s, has increasingly become a factor in tourism since the 2000s, and which is now being questioned particularly with regard to its postcolonial gaps. Questions in the context of the conference will be: Whose memory is manifested publicly? By what means? What is a “lieu de mémoire” in a neoliberal world? What should not be forgotten? And what role does iconoclasm play in this?

The conference is dedicated to the history of artistic counter-monuments and forms of protest, discusses aesthetics of memory and historical manifestations in public space, and asks about para-monuments for the present.


PROGRAMME

Thursday, December 2, 2021, 5 pm
HFBK Hamburg, Aula

Michaela Melián and Nora Sternfeld: Aesthetic Procedures and History Politics in Public Space (20 min.)

Mirjam Zadoff, Michaela Melián, Ayşe Güleç, Nora Sternfeld: Against the Grain. On Memory Work (40 min.)

Olu Oguibe in dialogue with Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock: Monuments to the Vulnerable (30 min)

Presentation Para-City-Walks (15 min)


Friday, December 3, 2021

9 am–12.30 pm
Para-City-Walks organized by HFBK-students
Meeting point: HFBK Hamburg, entrance hall
Imke Eppelmann, Matthis Frickhöffer, Jessica Herden, Eve Larue, Sophia Leitenmayer, Lena Sandhof, Cara Theres Petrovic, Kervin Saint Pere, Janne Wagner

2 pm
Heba Y. Amin: The Devils Garden (project in progress)
Eduard Freudmann: Schandwache – Vigil of Disgrace

3.30 pm
Daniela Ortiz in dialogue with Anja Steidinger (video conference): The Beautiful Moment to See them Fall

4.30 pm
Ayşe Güleç: The Violence After the Violence. The Fate of the Memorials to the Victims of Racism
Ulf Aminde: The Bomb After the Bomb
Lee Hielscher: Relating Memories. How demanding a collective memory questions how society is produced

6.15 pm
Julia Friedrich: No Longer Standing. How to deal with a Nazi artwork from Museum Ludwig’s collection
Martin Krenn: Participatory & Collaborative Monument Projects
Max Czollek: The Future of Memory


Saturday, December 4, 2021
HFBK Hamburg, Aula

10 am
Leon Kahane: Schuld und Erinnerung – Guit and Memory
Talya Feldman: Wir Sind Hier – We are here

11.30 am
Minna Henriksson: Disappearing and reappearing Lenins
Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock: Hundred thirty and one bodies in a garden full of ghosts - on absence in contemporary archives

1 pm – 2 pm
Lunch Break

2 pm
Tania Mancheno: What is the sound of a monument? Soundscapes of decolonial memories in Hamburg
Stephan Trüby: Right-wing Spaces
Claas Gefroi: How much (and what) memory does the future need? Built testimony of Hamburg Jews.
Afterwards Q&A

4 pm – 5 pm
Debriefing Session with Michaela Melián and Nora Sternfeld


Viewing Area with Installations in the four vitrines in the Aula at HFBK and video screenings by Junya Fujita, New Media Socialism, Kervin Saint Pere

Conceived by Nora Sternfeld (Professor of Art Education, HFBK Hamburg) & Michaela Melián (Artist, Musician and Professor of Time-based Media, HFBK Hamburg)
Organised by Julia Stolba (PhD student, HFBK Hamburg)

The conference will be held in English.

The event will be recorded and can then be viewed at
https://mediathek.hfbk.net.

Please refer to our website www.hfbk-hamburg.de
for details on the hygiene regulations that apply at that time.

We offer all conference participants childcare facilities.
Please register by November 29, 2021:
studierenmitkindhfbk.hamburg.de

Please refer to our website www.hfbk-hamburg.de for details on the hygiene regulations that apply at that time.

Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg
Lerchenfeld 2
22081 Hamburg