Ruins Of Public Space
The Nonument project is a new community initiative that tackles the research of monuments, buildings and public spaces in a novel way. Instead of focusing on the initial projects, the focus moves towards new context and changes experienced by these spaces in the time of their duration.
The Monument to Brotherhood in Plovdiv by Vladimir Rangelov and Lyubomir Shinkov is one of many monuments dedicated to Bulgarians and Russians who sacrificed their lives in the wars. | Photo © Emil Iliev
As coal mining declined in the 1960s, the significance of the Kohlebrecher Kohlgrube by Wiechels Steyr began to wane. In 1966 it finally shut down and the facilities were left to decay. After several fires in 1968, the wooden façade was destroyed. | Photo via Nonument
During Socialism Bulgarian cities were meant to get reconstructions. Shumen was selected for renovation and an Unfinished city by Ivan Sivrev has started but it was never finished. | Photo © Ani Ivanova
The third international Nonument symposium on decaying, destroyed and abandoned monuments, architecture and public space of the 20th century celebrates the release of the first book, combining possible strategies of intervention in a continually transforming contemporary city.
The first panel Nonument Spaces will be focusing on the decaying and abandoned buildings and spaces as an opportunity for their radical recontextualisation through the contributions of Miljena Vučković, Elisa Sorentino, Peter Rauch in Urška Jurman. The second panel will address the Urban Discontinuities. Spaces and buildings of socialist societies becomes relevant again through focusing on how they change because of the political transitions and exhibit signs of collective suppression. Antonia Stanev, Adam Knight, Blaž Babnik Romaniuk and Helka Dzsacsovszki will focus on the question of these political and social voids. Speakers of the third panel Public Space in Extremis, Nika Van Berkel, Antonio Grgić, Andrea Elera and Mollie Brooks will address the contemporary movement and surveillance of the public space. The evening will conclude with the keynote “Egypt” rather then “October”: Incongruences in interpreting Yugoslav national-liberation monuments, then and now. Branislav Dimitrijević will present an analysis of discursive approaches to Yugoslav socialist monumental sculpture from the time of their installment to their current popularity.
The symposium will also be the launch of our first and long awaited Nonument! Book with texts by Branislav Dimitrijević, Alexei Monroe, Nika Grabar, Ljubica Slavković, Hans von Houwelingen, Miloš Kosec and Elke Krasny. These essays offer a bird’s eye view of the vast nonumental field from all across the globe, from contextualising the fetishism of both British brutalism and Yugoslav “Spomeniks” to the influence of post-colonial discourse and laissez-faire economics of the post-1990 transition from socialism to capitalism upon the changed urban space.
The book also includes two visual essays by the Nonument Group. The outer sleeve of the book is printed with an index and a map of nonuments in Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Serbia and Slovenia. This index of 120 nonuments - the nonument database, is an archive of the ongoing multidisciplinary research of twentieth-century built spaces that have undergone a shift in meaning.
*** Ruins of Public Space* Kino Šiška, Ljubljana, 28. October 2020 from 14.00 to 20.30
Program schedule abstracts // Registration Organisation: MoTA - Museum of Transitory Art, Kino Šiška *symposium will be live-streamed
