Smashing Monuments
The title may evoke images of gleeful, destructive anarchism, but “smashing” here signals a relationship between people and official city statues that is friendly, jovial, even a little melancholic.
Five members of the Indonesian art collective ruangrupa (which directed this year’s controversial Documenta exhibition) each walk to a spot where a monument stands. Once glorious, these figures are now a little hidden, forgotten, unseen. Each one, from Pizza Man to the Welcome Monument, embodies a transformative moment in the nation’s political history, an index of its hopes and dreams. The artists stage conversations with these objects, within a repeated format suited to gallery installation as much as to film projection.
Argentine director Díaz Morales’ Smashing Monuments is many things: homespun performance art, social essay, and a pop-cultural study of Indonesian footwear.
– Adrian Martin
Also in this combined programme
-
Speech for a Melting Statue
A poet anticipates the removal of a colonial statue, while anti-racist demonstrators occupy Brussels streets.
Trailer
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Film details
- Countries of production
- Indonesia, Netherlands
- Year
- 2023
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2023
- Length
- 50'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
