“By hoping and praying to monuments, are we not avoiding having to really look at ourselves and our actions? As we worship these pillars of the past, we are passively allowing the repetition of history to take place before our eyes. Something fundamental must be changed. We must break away from the pattern to create a new path for the future.”
Takeda, Shinpei. Antimonument, Nagasaki Art Museum (2015)
During the recent years, we are confronted with more and more images of protestors destroying or vandalizing monuments that express a colonial or imperialist worldview. These acts of destroying monuments became a universally understood symbol of uprising and discontent against the publicly inscribed history. The statue of Sadam Hussein is a good example. The idea for “Antimonument Extended” - Virtual Reality program aims to create a discussion about the status of such monuments in our society without physically destroying them. By means of Virtual Reality technology users can intervene (spray paint, virtually deconstruct, etc… ) directly on the scanned version of the controversial monuments.
The project is focused on five public monuments in Düsseldorf made by artists formerly on the list of “Gottbegnadeten” (god-gifted) by the National socialist regime. These artists, even after the war, continued to receive large public monument commissions, and they are still in our public spaces. Pop-up workshops will take place in front of these sculptures - where visitors can try out the Virtual Reality program. In parallel, artists living in Germany and Austria with immigration background) are invited to intervene on these monuments with 3D projection mapping and performance. The concluding exhibition will take place in a gallery where the documentation of these pop-up workshops can be seen, while giving a platform to further discuss the meaning of the project in current context.
Antimonument e.V. is a public charity organization founded in 2017 after an initial call by Shinpei Takeda drawing on his 2015 “Antimonument Manifest” in order to create a platform for the projects at the intersections of art, memory and technology.
Technical Partner: Professor Jens Herder, Virtual Studio / Virtual Reality Lab, University of Applied Science Düsseldorf
and students: Andrea Feuerstein / Enya Funke / Kocere Yildiz / David Ribeiro / Soren Ali / Valentin Kiesche / Julian Dohmen / Jeremy Benjamin / Taylan Ergün / Maja Michealis / Jannik Kölper / Zawenkul Kakkar
Sound Artist: Jewgeni Birkhoff
Invited Artists:
Oscar Cueto from Mexico, based in Vienna
Picallo Gil based in Vienna,
Alejandra Baltazares from Mexico, based in Düsseldorf,
Navid Razavi from Iran, based in Köln,
Shinpei Takeda from Japan, based in Mexico, US and Germany
2023 Summer season
24.6.2023 - Mixed Reality Pop-up Workshop @ Aquazoo, Düsseldorf 12~23Uhr
19.8.2023 - Performance @ Düsseldorf Golzheim 15uhr Mixed Reality Pop-up Workshop/Performance @ Königsallee / Golf-Adolf platz12 uhr – 20uhr
23.8.2023 - Conference “Antimonument Expanded” @ Center for Technology and Culture, Southern Denmark University 15uhr – 17uhr
4.8.2023-27.8.2023 - “Antimonument Expanded” Exhibition @Wildpalms