Monumental amnesia: reading the spatial narratives written by contemporary urban landscapes.

Abstract

Monumental Amnesia: Reading the Spatial Narratives Written by Contemporary Urban Landscapes This thesis analyses the spatial stories inscribed into urban landscapes by monuments. Differentiating between officially sanctioned, symbolic, and everyday monuments, this thesis theorises the narratological space composed by these objects: static, imagined and transitional, respectively. It argues that monumental sites are spaces of forgetting, rather than remembering, characterised through invisibility, opacity and mystification. Infused with paradox, monuments simultaneously reveal and conceal the histories and urban memories they are expected to commemorate. The discussion then turns to contemporary art, in particular memory installations, as a practice that counters the mystification inherent within urban space, actively exposing alternative pasts and memories. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first analyses the contemporary, officially sanctioned monuments of Vilnius, Lithuania that celebrate an ancient nationalism, alongside two neighboring sculpture parks that display retired Soviet icons, with a particular focus on Gintaris Karosas’ sculpture Infotree LNK. The second chapter theorises symbolic monuments, and focuses on the Japanese theme park Tobu World Square as a curiosity cabinet where the contemporary spatial practice, identified by Anthony Giddens, of “disembedding” is performed in miniature. It concludes with a discussion of Susan Norrie’s DVD installation of the park ENOLA. The third chapter examines everyday monuments, focusing on the industrial ruins of Manchester to unravel the archival aspects of these monuments and their gentrification. It closes with a study of Cornelia Parker’s installation Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. Through these urban case studies and accompanying memory installations, the thesis explores how urban monuments disguise certain histories and memories of a city, and how art can reclaim alternative stories and memories from urban amnesia.