Papers by Margrethe Troensegaard
This paper was commissioned for the catalogue of the Estonian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture... more This paper was commissioned for the catalogue of the Estonian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2018 (Weak Monument).
The paper sets out to investigate the strange and perhaps unexpected contemporaneity of the monument in order to better understand its expression within current artistic practices. The text is built as a survey, retracing fragments of the cultural and semantic history of the term from an art historical perspective, and highlights a few key discussions and critiques from the Western hemisphere that have shaped the position and possibilities of the concept as we inherit it today.
What is the contemporary condition of the monument? In relation to the current issue's discussion... more What is the contemporary condition of the monument? In relation to the current issue's discussion of immersive and discursive exhibition practices (Stedelijk Studies #4, Summer 2016), this essay places itself at a slight remove; rather than to analyse and evaluate specific curatorial strategies it seeks to raise questions of relevance to such practices and begins by moving the discourse out of the museum and into the public space. The point of interrogation here is the monument, a form with a particular capacity to tease and expose the triad we find at the core of any curatorial discourse: the relation between institution, artwork and audience. Following an introductory reflection on how to describe and define a 'monument', a term so broadly used it all but loses its value, the text proceeds to examine three cases, Monument de la Renaissance Africaine, Dakar (2010), Danh Vo's WE THE PEOPLE (DETAIL), various locations (2010-13), and Thomas Hirschhorn's Gramsci Monument, New York (2013). The sequencing of these geographically and culturally diverse works makes way for an interrogatory piece of writing that addresses the question of permanence versus temporariness of the artwork as exhibition (and the exhibition as artwork), and that of the political agency of the artistic form. Probing the social agency of the monument, the text draws lines between the symbolising capacity once held by modern sculpture and the oscillation between immersion and discursiveness as two complimentary modes of communication. The discursive content or function of the monument (i.e. what it commemorates) is activated through the viewer's personal, immersive encounter with its form, a form that potentially places its viewer as a participant to the construction of its message rather than as a mere receiver.
This study sets out to examine Gramsci Monument (2013), the fourth and final in a se-ries of monu... more This study sets out to examine Gramsci Monument (2013), the fourth and final in a se-ries of monuments constructed by Thomas Hirschhorn, from a form-oriented perspec-tive. This was done in order to identify the sculptural premises of the work and to evalu-ate to what extent this project really did establish a new term of monument, as Hirsch-horn proclaimed. The second objective of the study was to assess the role of Dia Art Foundation (Dia) as exhibiting institution. The analysis of Gramsci Monument was based on my personal observation and professional experience through a temporary col-laboration with Dia on this project, and a number of site visits during the running of the monument (1 July – 15 September, 2013), in conjunction with the sculptural theories of Alois Riegl, Rosalind Krauss, and the writings of more recent scholars, Miwon Kwon and Claire Bishop. Through an examination of the location, materiality, and function of Gramsci Monument, and the role of Hirschhorn as artist, I have argued that these com-ponents were all subsumed by the same aesthetics, and that the social, commemorative and event-based element of this monument were thus as integral to its medium as its physical traits. Hirschhorn’s active employment of the social as form was the element that strongest redefined the monument as a sculptural category. This expanded notion of form extended into the exhibiting institution by dictating the manner of its engagement; Dia’s role was that of an invisible facilitator with a personal investment. Gramsci Mon-ument hereby challenged the notion of ‘curator’, ‘exhibition’ and ‘audience’ as distinc-tive and distinguishable categories and instituted a temporary but fully functioning insti-tution based on the ideology of the encounter. This monument was consecrated not just to the commemoration of Gramsci, but also to the assertion of the necessity of resistance within forms, whether institutional, sculptural or social.
A discursive and aesthetic interrogation of the use of social engagement as artistic medium with ... more A discursive and aesthetic interrogation of the use of social engagement as artistic medium with Jeanne van Heejsvijk's fully functioning community bakery 2Up2Down (Liverpool Biennial 2012-present), as case in point.
This essay addresses, from a curatorial perspective, some of the political and ethical complexiti... more This essay addresses, from a curatorial perspective, some of the political and ethical complexities related to foreign cultural interference into regions subject to political conflict with the British Council’s investment in the Middle East and North Africa as a case example. The essay was prompted by a recent publication of the British Council: Voices of the People: Culture, Conflict and Change in North Africa (January 2013)
Highlights and curatorial considerations from the 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013)
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Papers by Margrethe Troensegaard
The paper sets out to investigate the strange and perhaps unexpected contemporaneity of the monument in order to better understand its expression within current artistic practices. The text is built as a survey, retracing fragments of the cultural and semantic history of the term from an art historical perspective, and highlights a few key discussions and critiques from the Western hemisphere that have shaped the position and possibilities of the concept as we inherit it today.
The paper sets out to investigate the strange and perhaps unexpected contemporaneity of the monument in order to better understand its expression within current artistic practices. The text is built as a survey, retracing fragments of the cultural and semantic history of the term from an art historical perspective, and highlights a few key discussions and critiques from the Western hemisphere that have shaped the position and possibilities of the concept as we inherit it today.