Contribution to Monuments Issue, October Magazine

2018

 

The bronze public monuments built to cut through time as Shackleton’s Endurance was built to cut through arctic ice are arriving in our present moment as anachronistic vessels. Whether appropriate or not, they refuse to budge from public space. This crusty stubbornness clashes with today’s viral consensus production: we like, share, tweet, and post for news, public healing, and entertainment alike. All of these are forms of voting. Embedded into this constant voting culture is the assumption that all things, people, and phenomena must eventually conform to the law of public opinion with binary options, in this case: Preserve monuments! Tear them down! What about a healing process that moves beyond the binary?

(read full essay in pdf)