Between personification, national identity and time relation
Human built monuments distinguish themselves from natural monuments which are found by people and exist long before human life did. They are not intended to mean something beforehand; the act of symbolizing follows afterwards.
So as in the case of the ‘Findling’ found in the Elbe of Hamburg 1999 during dredging work under water. Its age comes from its material Växjö-Granit from the ice age in Småland (Sweden) and count approximately 1,8 billion years.
Because of its found place in Hamburg and its origin in Sweden, the general consulate of Sweden and the senate of Hamburg decided to make the 217 tons heavy glacial erratic to a symbol of immigration of people regardless of their height and origin.
What makes it paradox at the same time: It became special because of its size and has been personified especially with a new national identity based on its origin.
There are plenty of smaller glacial erratic and geotopes which give also information about the ice age and have an interregional relation but are just too small to be noticed.
On top of that, there has been a ceremony: The glacial erratic was christened and named with a German idiomatic expression “Alter Schwede” implying astonishment and providing a term for a good honest friend. “The oldest immigrant of Hamburg”. This significant personification leads to another dimension of distinctive reminding.
So, those “Findlings” may belong to the oldest forms of monuments in the world’s history. But time does not play the importance of a monument nowadays anymore.
Whereas old monuments remember us of the past, new monuments – as Robert Smithson once defined in times of Minimal Art in the 60s – are built against evolution as well as time with movement and space. Their energy drain lead to an inactive history, ages are radical reduced to seconds. The objective present consists of the past and the future at the same time, that are possibly interchangeable. Whereas the Växjö Granit of the “Alter Schwede” monument remind us of the past a long, long time ago, new monuments let us forget the future and can tell a story of past and future within seconds.
Transition apart of entropy makes us think of the actual though time related question: How can we define future monuments and interact with them nowadays?
