Investigating Representation in Public Spaces: Monument Lab's Field Trip Project
Recorded On: 11/19/2020
About this Webinar
Monument Lab is a public art and history studio based in Philadelphia that works with artists, students, educators, activists, municipal agencies, and cultural institutions on participatory approaches to public engagement and collective memory. Monument Lab critically engages our inherited symbols in order to unearth the next generation of monuments that elevate stories of resistance and hope. The Monument Lab Field Trip is a free hands-on activity guide to help participants take a closer look at the monuments in their city or town. The Field Trip initiative was inspired by the challenges presented this year to reckoning and reflecting on our monument landscape at a moment with fewer opportunities for in-person engagements to historic sites and museums.
Different activities of the Field Trip invite participants in social distance or virtually from their homespaces to investigate historical monuments in their community, ask questions about art and justice in public spaces, and propose their own ideas for a monument. Join Monument Lab’s Paul Farber, Patricia Kim, and Kanyinsola Anifowoshe to discuss the Field Trip as a platform for engagement, imagination, and dialogue.
Participants will learn about:
- Designing public art and history engagements in the midst of COVID-19 and reckoning over the commemorative landscape
- Shaping remote and self-directed engagements, facilitations, and methods for art and education
- Building pathways to encourage hyperlocal explorations of art and culture that also address connections to social justice
Director, Monument Lab
Paul M. Farber, PhD is Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab. Farber is author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall and co-editor with Ken Lum of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. He also currently serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.
Instagram: @Paul_Farber; @Monument_Lab
Patricia Eunji Kim
Director of Communications and Assistant Curator, Monument Lab
Patricia Eunji Kim is Communications Director and Assistant Curator at Monument Lab and also serves as Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University.
Kanyinsola Anifowoshe is a curator and writer pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in History of Art at Yale University. In the In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens series (Chicago, 2019), she curated an exhibition and workshop series honoring Black women’s intergenerational and historically marginalized creative legacies. Kanyinsola has been editor-in-chief of Wahala Zine, a platform for the creative work of young people across the Nigerian diaspora, and host of The Now podcast, which highlights youth artists and activists. She was a Monument Lab Foundation Youth Fellow (2019) and her work has been featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.