slandie prinston is the Marketing + Communications Fellow at Now + There, as well as a writer and organizer in Boston.

On April 19, 2022, we co-hosted a N+T Asks at Goethe-Institut Boston’s gorgeous Back Bay location. The occasion, a cross-cultural dialogue around monuments and memorials with Media artists Juan Obando and Mischa Kuball moderated by Educator Devin Morris of the Teacher’s Lounge centered on creating open spaces for intangible memorials. Informed by curiosity and play, Obando and Kuball’s works uplift multiple voices, perspectives, and alternative mythologies.

Following their conversation and consequently, as we gear up for Obando’s Summer Sets coming to Boston’s Dock Square this July, the idea that people are archives invites fresh possibilities in contemporary identity expression and place-making. However we define ourselves, we can’t deny the power of legacy and history in mitigating how much space we take - IF there is even the space or opportunity for us - to enliven our voices, bodies, and experiences. We pulled these quotes from Juan and Mischa but there are many other gems of insight within the full conversation. Check it out below along with our recommended reading list and let us know your thoughts!

“I know so many cities founded by the Nazi regime and they have so many problems with the identity of the population to deal with.. because of that notion and the DNA of that… Are you going to destroy a whole city because of that DNA? I think you have to help them [community stakeholders] to reveal that truth and find opportunities to work with it… To increase the level of awareness”

— Mischa Kuball

“Why do we need a monument when we are walking monuments ourselves - our histories?”

— Juan Obando

For Further Reading:

View this Atlas Obscura article about Berlin’s Citadel “Zitadelle” Musem where problematic “heroic” statues go on display at eye level, to equalize power while encouraging people to contend with the past and its values.
Here’s an article from Philosopher, Writer, and director of the Einstein Forum, Susan Neiman on why there are no Nazi memorials in Germany and what the United States can learn about collective guilt and reparation, memory and erasure, and seizing the present to prepare for the future.
Consisting of 2,711 steles and an underground “Place of Information” the Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe opened in 2005. It is the central Holocaust memorial in Germany, designed by New York architect Peter Eisenman, in response to reparation demands made by European Jews in the late 1980s.
N+T reflections from June 2020 on The Take Down movement targeting toxic memorials and monuments in Boston, particularly Christopher Columbus’ statue in the North End and Thomas Ball’s Emancipation Memorial.
Claire Doherty’s Situation, written in response to art and theory that considers public place-making.
The Synagogue StommeIn Art Project launched in 1991 at the StommeIn Synagogue, one of the few synagogues that survived Nazi Germany’s 1938 Pogroms. This project invites a lasting dialogue about the subjects of crimes, memorials, and reparations.
Here’s a definition of the term “relational aesthetics,” created by curator Nicolas Bourriaud in the 1990s.
Created in 2009, From stone to stone captures a long kiss between the statue of Simon Bolivar in Bogota, Colombia, and Adriana García Galán.
Take a look at Carlo Castro Arias’s “What does not Suffer does not Live” (2010) a video installation of a statue of Simon Bolivar constructed with pigeon food and located in Bogota’s main plaza.

Join us:

Visit our N+T Asks page for upcoming events and the first installment in this four-part conversation series offered in partnership with Goethe-Institut Boston.

Stay in the loop about future N+T Asks episodes — and all N+T happenings — by signing up for our newsletter

Additional support for this panel series is being provided by New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA).