Contra Monumentos/Counter Monuments

Contributors
Andreia Oliveira, Barbara Almeida, Camila Santos, Calixto Bento, Cristiano Figueiró, Fabiana Duarte, Luiz Augusto Alvim, Luyanda Zindela, Matheus Moreno, Milena Szafir, Natália Faria, Niresh Singh, and Tasneem Seedat

Description

Virtual Monuments is a collaborative interdisciplinary project which began in 2018 between Durban University of Technology (Durban, South Africa), the Federal University of Santa Maria/Labinter (Santa Maria, Brazil), the Federal University of Ceara/#ir! (Fortaleza, Brazil). This project seeks to transform the immersive environments, as planetariums and domes, in the participating cities into shared, public, interactive, and inclusive virtual monuments or memorial sites.

Its objective is to craft shared “counter-monuments” within these space. These centring around figures, events, heritages or practices within the participating cities – whether big or small – that have been rendered through hegemonic power invisible or overlooked. Whereas traditional (physical) public monuments and memorial sites seek to permanently fix memory through power and are imposing, the digital monuments and memorials crafted through this project seek to be fluid, malleable and inclusive. Contra Monumentos/ Counter Monuments delves into the connected disconnected entanglements of living in a COVID 19 world. Presented within a 3D rendering of a planetarium environment, imagery and sounds from Brazil and South Africa are composited to construct these encounters.