Beginning with a photograph found in a de-accessioned library book celebrating early Nazi infrastructure (published in Germany, 1934), Unfortunate Monument aims to pull forward a multiplicity of moments embedded in this singular image.
For the ATA Window, a projection of the image, doubled, is paired with German composer Paul Hindemith’s Trauermusik (Mourning Music). Striking in its cartoon-like style, the monument in the photograph gives clues to its origin by way of date, language, and its incriminating crown of shovels. As with all the other images in the de-accessioned book, it is a pristine, two-sided paste-in card with German text on the reverse. This card, in particular, celebrates the completion of the newest German motorway. The final sentence of the text on the card roughly translates: Further Works are in Preparation. Our ominous understanding of the image is connected to our present location in time, as we witnessed these industrious German shovels dig pits for mass graves just a few years after they contributed to modern infrastructure.
Through the quiet, mournful tone of the music coupled with the image projection, Unfortunate Monument aims to reconstruct a new monument in the storefront window on Valencia Street. A temporary monument that speaks to the power of time-construction in collective social histories.
Amanda Curreri is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her posi-active body of work is focused on renegotiating the routine ways we understand space and language. She recently received a Joan Mitchell Fellowship and Stipend to attend OxBow’s Artist Residency (MI), and is preparing for her Spring 2010 solo exhibition at Ping Pong Gallery (SF). If you like biscotti, she urges you to participate in an artwork on view at the Brooklyn Historical Society and accessible online at: www.joesbiscottirecipe.blogspot.com.
Join us for a special evening of food, justice, and sustainability. As part of her