Elsa Carenzo

Department: Social Design
Website: www.elsacarenzo.com

Revealed Cities, Reacted Monuments

In many cities and cultures, monuments still have an active cultural role in public space. In various intentional or unintentional cultural rituals, monuments are touched in certain ways or specific actions take place around them. This reality applies mostly where religion and myths play an important role in the city's identity. The monuments that I researched are specifically statues and sculptures. Statues as they are trying to remind us of a common past, emphasizing an ideology and a pride of identity. And sculptures as art gestures, loaded with meanings and stories. Both of these monuments are given to citizens as a nostalgic or aesthetic feature in the public space. Nonetheless, these monuments and their (hi)story are ignored, forgotten or unknown. Their meaning changes through years even though their form remains the same. Through the creation of a new situation (a Participatory Projector Machine) I am trying to trigger new stories that citizens can appropriate and interpret. The stories that would emanate from this installation are personal, yet connected to the story and history of the statues.