Haklai / How to Use a Monument

How to Use a Monument Performance as a Way of Reflecting on the Role of Monuments in Today’s Cities

Authors: Or Haklai, Designer & MA Cultural Studies Student, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Enrico Chinellato, Designer & Ph.D. Student, University of Bologna

Research stage: other: MA research thesis at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem - Cultural Studies Program (supervisor: Dr. Dani Schrire) and architectural project by QUIZEPO (winning entry for 'Future Monuments' architecture competition, Paris 2020)

Category: Extended abstract

For us, it was built in the past. For them, it was built for the future. Now, we want to build a monument of the present, for the presents.

This research is concerned with exploring the meaning and role of historical monuments in the social context of cities nowadays, through a practice-based investigation revolving around creative place-making activities and art-based civic engagement.

There is a wide variety of monuments, ones that accompanied our cities for hundreds of years, as well as new ones that appear with ongoing events shaping our current culture. Traditionally, monuments stand as signifiers of power, order, and of historical storytelling, with their establishment containing an idea of history promoted by the state and its institutions.

Recent investigations of the factors who shape historical monuments indicate the existence of a production process of physical artifacts based on complex social construction of situated ideologies and practices. This reveals an inherent controversial nature of the monuments' meaning due to their inability to achieve and retain through time unanimity as to their “true” significance, presenting us a problem regarding their embodiment into a shared urban history -especially related to the concrete present times.

It then could be argued that the collective historical meaning of monuments must be investigated in the “practice of everyday life” 1, as it manifests in the physical use of the artifact operated through everyday communal discursive and performative acts that transforms the city through the unfolding of a collective memory 2. The purpose of this research is to focus on reconceptualization of these notions, investigating and unfolding how a new understanding of monuments can appear, one that engages with people’s everyday urban rituals, sets of actions and uses - formal and informal.

This research started in February 2020 as an invitation to intervene at the Porte Saint-Denis victory gate in Paris, as a research project led by PSA - The Paris School of Architecture, aimed at rethinking the shape and the understanding of future monuments. The Porte Saint-Denis victory arch is located in the 10th Arrondissement, set in the crossroads of boulevard Saint-Martin and Rue Saint-Denis. It is the first of four triumphal arches built in Paris in the late 17th century, on the course of Paris' old city walls, and inspired by the proportions of the well-known Rome arch, the Arch of Titus. Today, the monument counts as a scenery of the vibrant and chaotic area, yet standing as an inanimate immense built object.

The study is structured on three levels of investigations as follows.

The primary stage (A) aims at dissolving the built and spatial means of cities and their monuments, accordingly Paris and Porte Saint-Denis, into a critical setting by phenomenology analysis through their percepts and the sensorial affects 3. The analysis is based on understanding the monument's timeline of use; for us, at any given time, a monument is understood as built in the past - it can be a far distant past or a proximity one; in the Porte Saint-Denis case, it was four hundred years ago.

Building a traditional monument takes the future as its goal by the wish of perpetuating an event or a state of condition. This base understanding in the view of nowadays architecture brings a set of critical issues on the linearity and the present experience of the monument. (fig 1 - half page)

A visit at the physical and the virtual site explores the current condition of the place through textual and visual mapping, and by understanding that affects and percepts resonate with the changing condition of being in a place as an external state of the subjective body, crossing the boundaries of the personal experience 4. The experience of the Porte Saint-Denis was comprehended mainly by the representation in the media, first with the gathered presented knowledge of the place in the net, and later, by taking part in the media collection of representations, including taking pictures and representing ourselves in them, along with formulating a textual definition to the new monument environment. This practice of experiencing is aligned with the classical monument, where its use and purpose are embedded in representing the absolute, sacred, or secular one; the “true” importance of the monument is what it represents 5. (fig 2; fig 3 - half page)

The analysis discussed the monument by itself while the environment and surrounding of Porte Saint-Denis experienced as a multi-vibrant full of actions and encounters between a mixture of people. It was as if the street was not experiencing the victory arch at all.

The second stage (B) activates a design-centered action drawing from the previously acquired knowledge by redesigning the monument, changing its conditions through a physical metamorphosis according to the textual and visual mapping. The primary goal is to make the Porte Saint-Denis victory gate a usable artifact; to do so, the spatial features of the built structure needed alteration. The existing Arch is 25 meters high and made from heavy bright stone, which symbolizes a timeless and immortal timetable. The sensorial features are not in referring to the public or making dialogue with the environment; the form asks the surrounding its gaze, the monument is there to be looked at and be present.

Through playing with the scale and materiality, the Arch transfigured into a piece of furniture; the stone changed into simple wood, and the scale contracted into human wardrobe size. The outcome was a wooden furniture shaped like a closet. The form and the decorated facade of the victory arch remain a reminiscence of the existing stone monument, while the urban furniture is cut into pieces, suiting its new scale - a human-sized object. (fig 4 - half page; fig 5 - full page)

The redesigning of the monument continued with an open-ended performative and participatory action, by placing the new monument underneath the Porte Saint-Denis victory gate and engaging with its surroundings. And then, for one day at the end of February, the monument transformed into a live event, performance artists and visual artists were invited to intervene and activate a dialogue with the new object, inviting actions from the local community addressing their own needs or stories. The event could have been shaped in endless forms, yet the artist's interaction with the street was crucial in order to achieve new relations in the street.

This creative place-making acted on Saint-Denis as a site-specific rehabilitation, and wished to create a new identification between the community and the historical monument. At its core, the event enables multiple and random actions into the city stage, bringing a deeper understanding of its spatial elements through the participatory acts. The event unveiled the needed quality of a continuous action that leads to multiple scenarios at the daily routine boundaries of the modern city regarding its monuments, symbols, and landmarks. (fig 6; fig 7; fig 8 - half page)

The research outcome unfolds in the third stage (C); by once again mapping and analyzing the new conditions of the place after the design-led event, operating a comparative evaluation with the first mapping that was drawn and its known features. Together with the new mapping, we could recognize the affects that compose a renewed understanding of the used monument till a different definition of a monument will emerge. This creative practice research seeks to explore embodied ways of knowing, understanding, and thinking as valuable tools for exploring the character of architectural praxis. The experiences and sensorial affects of that single-day event were all related to the relations made at the site, relations between the furniture, the artists, and the passersby; each artist drowned the attention differently to this unattractive site. The hip-hop artist interlaced with the furniture pieces brought attention from a distance across the street, while the visual and graphic artists drew participation from the people that pass through the Arch into a mutual painting. The entire experience was perceived and implemented through people's communication addressing the monument artifact. This significant realization reveals the need for continued performative action and ongoing events that, with time, will obtain a new perceived reality with different scenarios and characters. With eyes toward the future, this small study aims to grow and expand to different sites, including different types of monuments, while using the same tools with different unexpected results. Each study case will carry a phenomenology analysis, a first action intervening with the spatial and physical means of the existing monument, followed by a performative-participatory event, as a ‘happening’ in the Allan Kaprow kind of way 6. Numerous new usable monuments and artifacts will pave the way to the future everyday monument in a post-human scene of returning to collective action through art and design-based research.

Figure 1

Preliminary sketches on the existing monument and its context [Diagram: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 2: Preliminary sketches on the existing monument and its context [Diagram: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

A photo of the Porte Saint Denis victory gate [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 3: A photo of the Porte Saint Denis victory gate [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

A selfie of one of the authors in front of the Porte Saint Denis victory gate [Content: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 4: A selfie of one of the authors in front of the Porte Saint Denis victory gate [Content: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Preliminary sketches of the temporary structure [Diagram: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 5: Preliminary sketches of the temporary structure [Diagram: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Technical drawings of the temporary structure [Diagram: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 6: Technical drawings of the temporary structure [Diagram: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Photo of the event [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 7: Photo of the event [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Photo of the event [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 8: Photo of the event [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Photo of the event [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 9: Photo of the event [Photo: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

A virtual representation of the monument in its three forms during the exhibition [Content: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

Figure 10: A virtual representation of the monument in its three forms during the exhibition [Content: Or Haklai, Enrico Chinellato]

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