Clara Ianni
Otwarty pomnik [Open Monument]
Clara Ianni, an artist from Brazil, often works with different social groups on developing their identity and memory. The performative and participatory action in public space Open Monument asks questions about the possibility and needs of representing collective memory. It will be based on the findings of the questionnaire the artist sent out to people living in Warsaw. Open Monument, which is created in the form of an event, will be built literally out of the voices of people from different social and age groups, classes and ideologies. The work consists of a joint effort by people with radically different worldviews to open a communications channel working without selection criteria, which reveal the most contrasted or most common opinions.
The direct inspiration for this project, and its planned location on 12 November 2017, is the controversial monument of fraternal arms. It was erected in Warsaw’s Praga district in 1945 to commemorate the joint Polish–Soviet struggle against Nazism. This product of Polish–Russian artistic cooperation was taken down in 2015 for the construction of the metro. The monument was never restored. Open Monument will be placed on its base as a realization opening the situation with its non-materialness. It will construct public opinion collectively and performatively, stress the constructivism in the writing of history and the fluidity of memory, note the government’s moulding of society in a process of constant transformation, and observe the fact that monuments and other material facts (motorways, schools and so on) are created out of public money as manifestation of a passing historical dynamic by both what they reveal and what they hide.
This event will take place in the public space and materials from the work on the project will be presented in the exhibition space. The artist will develop a script for her activity according to the questionnaires she collects and in cooperation with members of the Intervalo-Escola.
