Sammlung Philara: ‘Adjustable Monuments’

What forms of commemoration does the future need? Stemming from the debate around the re-evaluation of monuments in public space, the Adjustable Monuments group exhibition at Sammlung Philara poses questions on whom, what, and above all, in what form we want to commemorate in future.

Nine artistic positions, including those of international artists and collectives, cast light on aspects of current opinion in regard to statues, monuments and memorials, and are complemented by new forms of memory culture. The positions in the exhibition encompass novel approaches to the memory culture of our present time. They draw upon a variety of practices: these include ritual acts and adoption of immaterial, temporary, flexible, interactive, process-oriented, multidirectional, and collective approaches.

The representative function, the understanding of temporality, commemorative practices, and the materiality of monuments are thus reformulated, and augmented by important aspects of the current culture of debate, including political commissioning processes and representation.