Welcome back to the Monument Lab podcast. This episode, we focus on St. Louis. For the past two years, Monument Lab has worked closely with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, mapping monuments in St. Louis. That includes traditional landmarks and unofficial sites of memory, whether they are existing, potential, or erased. To mark the close of our project together, we wanted to speak with locally-rooted MADAD, a brilliant and thoughtful collective of artists and designers from St. Louis whose work illuminates spatial injustice and cultural memory gaps in the region.MADAD’s Damon Davis, Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and De Nichols work to reimagine how joy, justice, and interactivity improve public spaces. The group started their collaborations during the making of Mirror Casket, a sculpture, performance, and visual call to action composed in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014. Mirror Casket is now in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.Their new project, Black Memory STL: Division, Displacement, and Local Diaspora, is a multi-year series of public art installations and interventions in partnership with the Brickline Greenway development and the Griot Museum of Black History. MADAD are also 2020 Monument Lab Fellows, and are featured in the exhibition and book project, Shaping the Past with the Goethe Institut and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education.

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Monumental “Local Diaspora” in St. Louis with MADAD’s Damon Davis, Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and De Nichols

The phrase “Museums Are Not Neutral” is both a hashtag and the rallying words of a movement. This mantra has already changed the way museums around the world are visited, curated, and protested. Amplified by our guests Art Worker La Tanya S. Autry and Museum Educator Mike Murawski, the hashtag #MuseumsAreNotNeutral has been engaged more than a million times online by museum curators and educators, and by colleagues in related fields like libraries and archives. As Autry, who is employed at MOCA Cleveland as the Gund Curatorial Fellow, notes, “I love the expression because it's simple. It's right to the point. I'm actually wearing one of my Museums Are Not Neutral shorts right now and I'm really proud to wear. I do feel like it's in a way a type of armor. It's like this is going to protect me today when I go out there and it lets people know I'm about no nonsense. I'm wearing this message right across my heart and I really mean it.” Across America and overseas, Museums are Not Neutral is changing the way we think about museums, with tactics that build community and question the traditional role of the museum and museum educators. Murawski, who is an Independent museum Consultant based in Portland, adds, “Just like La Tanya said, as soon as I see someone with a T-shirt or now with the mug and they're posting online or I come across them at a gathering or event it just feels good because you're connected with at least thousands of people all over the world that are really dedicated to pushing and advocating for change and transformation across museums.”We speak to Autry and Murawski about the roots of their Museums Are Not Neutral campaign, how they collaborate and build across social media, and how museums can and should transform as spaces of connection.

Museums are Not Neutral with Movement Co-Founders La Tanya S. Autry and Mike Murawski

What do you do when you’re fighting for survival and balancing grief on a societal level at the same time? This is a question many of us are facing now and asking ourselves in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the historical reference points we can access are stories from the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Dubbed the Spanish Flu, the deadly pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, including a half a million in the United States. These numbers can sound abstract, or worse, like cold statistics.  It is hard to fathom such loss.We also know that the 1918 pandemic coincided with World War I and deeply impacted military operations worldwide. More American troops died from the virus than in combat. But there are few monuments and memorials to victims of the Pandemic in the United States. No statue, no historical marker even in Philadelphia, one of the hardest hit cities in the U.S., where 20,000 people died of the Flu. This includes my great-great-grandmother.Our guest on this episode, Nancy Hill, one of the Philadelphia-based organizers of the Mütter Museum’s exhibition on the 1918 pandemic, Spit Spreads Death. She shares insights with us about how the pandemic is and is not remembered.“People could either choose to celebrate the armistice or they could choose to grieve not only the flu dead, but the military dead, the war dead. And they chose to celebrate the armistice instead and try to move on with their lives because it was just too much. And hopefully, we've gotten enough distance from this that we can start to commemorate those people because their families are still talking about them today, there are experiences that they survived and that they remembered have shaped their family for generations whether or not they knew it at the time.”This episode, we speak to Hill about cultural memory and timely lessons from the 1918 pandemic. The parallels between then and now are astounding, informative, and troubling. She shares stories of vulnerable communities – immigrants, African American migrants – who were hard hit by the virus and society’s response. She also unpacks how the ways everyday residents stepped up to help one another to care and commemorate in urgent ways. She also helped me shed light on my great great grandmother’s story, how she and her community may have experienced the 1918 pandemic.Hill closes with her hopes for greater understanding about viruses, and science behind them, as ways we can cope and look ahead.

Commemorating the 1918 Flu Pandemic with Mütter Museum Organizer Nancy Hill

In Richmond, Virginia, you encounter monuments, old and new – on Monument Avenue one-hundred-year-old Confederate generals stand alongside, since 1996, a statue honoring African American Tennis icon Arthur Ashe. Nearby, Kehinde Wiley’s new statue, Rumours of War, sits outside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a new permanent sculpture moved there following its premiere in New York’s Times Square last year. But the makeup of Monument Avenue may soon change. Just in the last few days, and after years of activism and organizing across the state, Governor Ralph Northam signed a Confederate Monuments Bill. Starting in summer 2020, local municipalities in Virginia can remove, relocate or contextualize monuments as they see fit.Last year, in anticipation of the shifts at the state level, Richmond’s Mayor Levar Stoney convened a History and Culture Commission. Its chair, Free Egunfemi Bangura, our guest today, is a tactical urbanist who founded Untold RVA. She pursues ways to memorialize beyond bronze and marble. Bangura illuminates the connections between language and power.“I promised myself I would always become a historian. And so I just feel like that was the earliest part of when I saw that history was going to be controlled by the dominant narrative, and that the dominant narrative was going to do nothing to try to make sure that people had a balanced understanding of their own history, and that you weren't going to learn anything about Richmond or the struggles of Richmond,” says Bangura.This episode, we speak to Bangura about her work in “Commemorative Justice,” a term she coined. She also breaks down her projects that have left an imprint on Richmond, and how traveling outside of the country has shifted her thinking on her homegrown projects.Bangura is a Soros Justice Fellow, a bureau chief at the United States Department of Arts and Culture, and 2019 Monument Lab Fellow. We collaborate together, including on an upcoming project called Shaping the Past, a partnership with the Goethe Institute and German Federal Agency for Civic Education.

Word Sound Power: A Self Determined Lexicon for Commemorative Justice with Historical Strategist Free Egunfemi Bangura

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a staggering number of businesses and much of our public life are paused across the country in the interest of health and safety. There is one place where activity has amped up since the shutdowns – construction sites along the U.S. Mexico border. Our guest is conservationist Laiken Jordahl, who works as a campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity near Arizona’s Organ Pipe National Monument. He documents the heightened activity of border wall construction on National Park land, which sits next to the Tohono O'odham tribal nation reservation and encompasses a UNESCO bioreserve.Jordahl posts on-the-ground reports and footage to his Twitter feed. He shares evidence of the Trump Administration’s disregard for federal Environmental Protections and the desecration of Native American heritage sites. He notes the Administration attempts to complete broad sections of the wall ahead of the election – and in the middle of the pandemic.As Jordahl shares, “This crisis has brought the world to its knees in a way that nothing else could. It's changed everything about our day to day lives and that's why it's so mystifying and enraging that border wall construction is continuing, and it's actually accelerating across Arizona. There are hundreds of construction workers here in our state right now that are building new miles of wall.” This episode, we speak to Jordahl, during the time of self-isolation and quarantine for COVID-19, about the accelerated pace of construction of the border wall. He shares the devastating impacts on the land and residents of the region, the ecological outcomes on endangered species and water systems, and the importance of bearing witness in the borderlands.

Bearing Witness in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands with Conservationist Laiken Jordahl

In times of crisis, in times of connection, artist Mel Chin makes his mark. A 2019 MacArthur Genius Award recipient, Chin’s artwork has been featured in major museums and biennials, in Times Square, the Halls of Congress, the TV show Melrose Place, and Monument Lab’s 2017 exhibition in the middle of Philadelphia’s City Hall. When you see Chin at work, you encounter an artist with purpose, with an eye toward building others up.“I think the lesson from all those situations and this situation is how to exercise self-critique and empathy. How do you have to rekindle it for each situation,” says Mel Chin.This episode, we speak to Chin, during the time of self-isolation and quarantine for COVID-19. We discuss how he and other artists stay connected. We also discuss how his new SOURCE Studio has a fellowship for women, trans, and non-binary artists to spend time developing their craft. Plus, we hear about when he discovered that he won the prestigious MacArthur Genius award.

No Return to Normal with Artist Mel Chin

Regina Agu has been researching and engaging green spaces in Houston, including Emancipation Park, especially to understand the legacy of communities of color in these spaces. As an artist, in a city where zoning laws, or lack thereof, impacts preservation, Agu also has seen the ways artists are on the forefront of innovating around and along with those parameters. As she notes, “I think that artists in Houston are actually quite vocal, some of them more vocal constituents who are really thinking through, ‘Okay, what can historic preservation look like given the policies and rules on the books in Houston?’” Agu has been a visiting artist and resident of Project Row Houses and the University of Houston, where she studied the psychogeography of Emanciaption Park. She has witnessed the aftermath of monument takedowns in New Orleans, and seen firsthand how artists can take the lead in reclaiming, re-naming, public spaces. Agu’s project Expanding Monuments is included in the High Line Joint Art Network’s New Monuments for New Cities Initiative. Over the last six months, Monument Lab has been research residents of this project and we are speaking with artists from each of its 5 partner cities – New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and Toronto – about monuments, memory, and public space.

Expanding Monuments with Regina Agu; New Monuments for New Cities Part 5

Over the last few months, it has been a treat to get to know Coco Guzman, a Spanish-Canadian queer artist based in Toronto. Guzman draws, documents, and gathers stories that are public and intimate. They created Missing Democracy – modeled after pet posters posted on utility poles and community bulletin boards – where a Grumpy Cat stands in for democracy. “She's old and grumpy because of too many upsetting and or fake news,” says Guzman. We speak with Guzman about their approach to working on and in public spaces, especially to deal with memory as monumental in subtle, purposeful ways. Guzman adds, “I think what is interesting is to figure out if you're not an artist and if you're not an activist, how can you leave traces of yourself in the public space? In a way that is not being co-opted.” Guzman’s Missing Democracy is a part of the High Line Joint Art Network’s New Monuments for New Cities. Over the last six months, Monument Lab has been research residents of this project and we are speaking with artists from each of its 5 partner cities – New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and Toronto – about monuments, memory, and public space.

Missing Democracy with Coco Guzman; New Monuments for New Cities Part 3

When you think of monuments and public art projects that provoke, that are critical and participatory, you think of Paul Ramírez Jonas. Born in California, raised in Honduras, and now a professor at New York’s Hunter College, he has produced renowned projects including Keys to the City, Public Trust, and the Commons, which have been huge inspirations to me and Monument Lab. Ask him to name traditional styles of monuments going back to antiquity, he can give you studied and detailed response – but he can also point you to projects of his that reinvent the form and expectations for participatory monuments. “I just had this moment where I realized, if you turn a monument inside-out, a sculptural monument, it becomes a theater,” he says. We speak to Paul Ramírez Jonas about the idea of Public Noise, a new proposal where he inverts the idea of an equestrian monument and presents a stage for debating what it means to occupy and tangle with public space. Ramirez Jonas made Public Noise as a part of the High Line Joint Art Network’s New Monuments for New Cities. Over the last six months, Monument Lab has been research residents of this project and we are speaking with artists from each of its 5 partner cities – New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and Toronto – about monuments, memory, and public space.

Public Noise with Paul Ramírez Jonas; New Monuments for New Cities Part 1

Lady Liberty, Uncle Sam, two figures who show up often as stand-ins for American politics in editorial cartoons and graphic narratives. But read between the images and the lines, and you can see how those symbols evolve with artists incorporating them to take on challenges of democracy. For artist, Eric García, based in Chicago, be brings these and other symbolic characters out in his work to engage nationalism, white supremacy, and exclusion. For his recent monumental poster, Monument to Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, he highlights a historical figure worthy of more spotlight, Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, a labor leader and anarchist organizer from Chicago whose impact on the history of labor is astounding. As García shares, “The five-day work week with the weekend, these are all monumental laws that we don't even realize, they're intricate in the workforce nowadays. And yeah, she was a heroine that a lot of people need to know about. And not many people do. The whole holiday of May Day was born out of, right here in the United States, there in Chicago during that Haymarket riot. And people don't realize that history,” We speak to García about Parson, how he learned about her, and how he could better honor her. García’s Monument to Lucy Gonzalez Parsons is included in the High Line Joint Art Network’s New Monuments for New Cities. Over the last six months, Monument Lab has been research residents of this project and we are speaking with artists from each of its 5 partner cities – New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and Toronto – about monuments, memory, and public space.

Monument to Lucy Gonzalez Parsons with Eric García; New Monuments for New Cities Part 4

When looking for monuments, most of the time we look up. But many artists have employed other strategies, from the ground up, to use concrete, bricks, or infrastructure to make their presence felt. Nicole Awai did just that . She is an artist and educator, born in Trinidad, based in NYC and Austin, where she teaches at the University of Austin. She was walking down the street and got hit with inspiration for a monument proposal poster that takes on the legacies of Columbus, colonialism, and the dialectic of exploration and exploitation. “All of a sudden, I saw it. I saw this access grill point as in the shape of Columbus that said "Reclaimed Water" on it, and that had Columbus's name on the bottom.” The result, Awai’s monument proposal, Reclaimed Water CC’d, engages the question of what to do with the role of Columbus. Awai’s Reclaimed Water CC’d is included in the High Line Joint Art Network’s New Monuments for New Cities. Over the last six months, Monument Lab has been research residents of this project and we are speaking with artists from each of its 5 partner cities – New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and Toronto – about monuments, memory, and public space.

Reclaimed Water CC'd With Nicole Awai; New Monuments for New Cities Part 2

This episode of Monument Lab, we recorded live from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, where Monument Lab has a research residency this summer. As a part of Public Iconographies, we are mapping monuments of St. Louis with a research team at the museum, in parks, and public spaces around the whole city, as a part of the Pulitzer’s Striking Power exhibition. To kickoff this project, we spoke to a trio of artists – Matt Joynt, Anthony Romero, and Josh Rios – as they prepared for their own exercise in mapping. Their project, Not Peaceable and Quiet (Piñata Sound System), includes the outfitting of a bike with a booming sound system and other purposeful flair. It is part of the Counterpublic neighborhood triennal in St. Louis on and around Cherokee Street, organized by the Luminary. The artists call it a “counter monument.” It takes up space, physically, and also is fully realized when participants pedal it around, moving the soundtrack with them. Not Peaceable and Quiet doesn’t just use any bike – they transformed a retired bicycle previously used by a bike-sharing company that had left the St. Louis market and its fleet of 750 dockless bikes behind. The artists’ goal is to call attention to the failings of “on-demand lifestyle,” and policing of black and brown communities around calls for silence and order. In turn, they want to mark resistance through sound. “Music that we chose, becomes a way to map the resiliency of these peoples who are being exploited, who are being dehumanized, but who find a way to transcend,” says Romero. We recorded this episode live at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in late May 2019, the night before Not Peaceable and Quiet premiered at Counterpublic.

“Not Peaceable and Quiet” with Counterpublic Artists with Matt Joynt, Anthony Romero, and Josh Rios

This week, news leaked of the Trump administration’s deployment of an unspecified number of military service members to paint stretches of the border reinforcements in the California town of Calexico. The goal: to improve the border’s "aesthetic appearance." There’s precedent to this. Wall builders go to great lengths to hide and distract from the brutality of border walls. For example, during the Cold War, the East German government ordered the Berlin Wall to be fully rebuilt more than once for the purpose of gaining prestige. That was before visual artists transformed that wall into the world’s largest canvas for expressions of resistance. For contemporary artist Ana Teresa Fernández, the idea of painting the U.S.-Mexico border is not new. Fernández is a renowned artist and social sculptor. She was born in Mexico and is based in California. Back in 2011, she painted stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border fence blue to resemble the color of the sky for a project she called Borrando La Frontera (Erasing the Border). Fernández has worked at the U.S.-Mexico border for over 15 years, before the Trump presidency, and has seen the border fence become increasingly militarized. “Where I became aware and it completely just hit me with a huge bang in my gut when I first saw it and witnessed it.” We spoke to Fernández about her life growing up in Mexico and Southern California, and what happened when she painted the border near Tijuana in a dress and high heels. We also discussed her continued artist’s practice at global border lines and crossing points for migrant families including the Mediterranean Sea, and her recent collaboration with writer and cultural geographer Rebecca Solnit.

Erasing the Border and the Wall in Our Heads with Social Sculptor Ana Teresa Fernández

On Monument Lab’s bulletin, we recently published “The New Gatekeepers: Will Google Decide How We Remember Syria's Civil War.” Written by Global Voices Advocacy Director Ellery Roberts Biddle, “The New Gatekeepers” examines how big tech companies like Google and Facebook are shaping our view of the historical record of war atrocities and other traumatic events. These companies increasingly use artificial intelligence to handle and sometimes censor shared content on social media posted from the frontlines of conflict zones, impacting how we learn about and will remember historical events. In her roles at Global Voices and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Roberts Biddle reports on and defends the rights of journalists around the world. For Monument Lab, Roberts Biddle looked specifically at a counter example, the case of the Syrian Archive, a Syrian-led group of technologists based in Berlin, seeking to organize and backup more than five million images and video files shared online from the war, including devastating images of violence and chemical attacks on civilians. This archive can be used by journalists and perhaps one day in a war crimes trials, if the regime ever faces charges. For this episode, we are also joined by Jacke Zammuto of Witness, where she is a program manager focused on video and media to defend human rights. Zammuto works with community organizations on documenting police accountability, immigrant rights, and indigenous rights.

The New Gatekeepers: Will Google decide how we remember Syria’s Civil War?

Ida B. Wells was an investigative journalist, an educator, a suffragist, a truth teller. She was born in Holly Spring, Mississippi in 1862. As an African American woman, she moved to Memphis and then Chicago, as she built a national reputation for her civil rights work. She reported and revealed the horrors of lynching in pamphlets and publications including Southern Horrors and The Red Record. Today, her great-granddaughter, author Michelle Duster, carries on her legacy. She has retraced Wells’ footsteps in the pursuit of justice, including leading efforts in the city of Chicago to dedicate the new Ida B. Wells Drive and to fundraise for a monument to her late great-grandmother in the city’s Bronzeville section. This week, Duster travels to the University of Mississippi, where scholars and students have organized the Ida B Wells Teach In: A Monument to Justice. We speak with Duster, and two of the organizers, History Professor Garrett Felber and graduate student Beth Kruse. The event was planned in response to an effort to rename the University’s journalism school after Ida B. Wells. It also occurs in the face of a struggle to remove a confederate monument from the heart of campus, all a part of ongoing efforts to seek what they highlight as “reparative justice” for the campus, sparked by Wells’ memory.

Up With Ida: A Monumental Teach-In for Ida B. Wells at the University of Mississippi

Welcome to Monument Lab, a public art and history podcast. Each episode, host Paul Farber explores stories and critical conversations around the past, present, and future of monuments. We speak to the artists, activists, and historians on the frontlines, building the next generation of public spaces through stories of social justice and equity. Here are the monumental people, places, and ideas of our time.

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