Map of Revisionist Monuments

Map of Revisionist Monuments is a research project managed by Gal Kirn and Fokus Grupa, initiated as a response to the public call to raise the Memorial for the Victims of Totalitarianism in Brussel (opens in a new tab)s which is equating communism and fascism in the "center of Europe". The aim of the project is to gather and map the data on revisionist monuments like this one that have risen across Europe, as well as build a community of leftist researchers, activists and artists around this aim in order to build upon the knowledge gained and formulate a critique.

We have contacted numerous people from various European countries to submit proposals of the revisionist monuments they think should be included, while building a repository of case studies (opens in a new tab), we are slowly developing a classification of the revisionist strategies employed by various monuments etc. We have also initiated a Newsletter (opens in a new tab) to correspond with interested artists, researchers and activists. A small selection of monuments that belong to the first group of monuments we have classified as “open rehabilitation of fascism and collaborationism (opens in a new tab)” have been put on a map (opens in a new tab) [pdf] intended to function as an invitation of additional collaborators on the project. Map was initially made for the Neighbours exhibition in Modern Art Museum in Warsaw.

In early 2019. we were invited to exhibit another work (Invisible Matter) on the 54. Zagreb Salon. A couple of days before the opening, after the work was already installed, we found out the Croatian Association of Artists that hosted the exhibition, and of which we are members, published an open call for raising a revisionist monuments to the victims of second world war, and the post world war victims, equating and accentuating victims that were members/collaborationists with the Nazis. The reaction we could come up with in the short time span we had left, was to paste the Map of Revisionist Monuments we had made for the Warsaw exhibition across the work already installed. [with the support of curators of the Salon].

Details

project by: Gal Kirn (opens in a new tab) & Fokus Grupa
photo credits: Juraj Vuglač (opens in a new tab)
Featured in:
Without Anesthesia [54. Zagreb Salon] (opens in a new tab), HDLU (opens in a new tab), Zagreb — curated by Branka Benčić (opens in a new tab) & Tevz Logar (opens in a new tab)
Neighbours — Warsaw Under Construction 10 (opens in a new tab), Museum of Modern Art (opens in a new tab), Warsaw — curated by Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) (opens in a new tab)