Nonument Artistic Interventions

About
Database

NONUMENT GROUP is a research and art collective that deals with processes of remembering and oblivion in space. Their activities include research on nonuments – architecture, monuments, public spaces, infrastructure – whose meaning has transformed as a result of social or political changes. In the process, the group has established a register of nonuments, organized field events, and explored diverse strategies to create artistic interventions that interrogate the meaning of heritage in space through the experience of the present.

The Nonument Group is formed by Neja Tomšič, Martin Bricelj Baraga, Nika Grabar and Miloš Kosec. In their projects, they collaborate internationally with a number of co-creators, researchers and artists.

PORTFOLIO

Nonument Group is an artist and research collective focusing on nonuments – 20th century architecture, monuments and public spaces that have undergone a shift in symbolic meaning or had lost it as a consequence of political and social changes.

Working with institutional partners and individual researchers, the Nonument Group maps and archives Nonuments across the world. Its archive can be read as a map of tensions embodied in spaces and buildings. The Nonument Group’s artistic and theoretical approach aims to dissect memory and context of selected nonuments. With its artistic interventions, the Nonument Group sets out to explore which tensions could be released through each nonument’s repurposing.

The group’s research and artistic production address questions of memory, representation, semantics and other aspects of monumentalism, as well as attempts to publicly address the perception of public space and its role in everyday urban life.

From Nowhere to Noplace, Pioneer Railway

Ljubljana, Slovenia

From Nowhere to Noplace was a performative sound walk action that took place in Ljubljana at the site of the former Pioneer Railroad. On 25 May 2019, this artistic intervention revived the children's railway that almost completely disappeared from the city and public memory.

Intervention

Nonument 01: McKeldin Fountain

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Nonument 01: McKeldin Fountain was the first action by the international artistic collective Nonument Group. After several on-site interventions and unsuccessful attempts at saving the McKeldin Fountain in downtown Baltimore, the group has created an Augmented Reality app, a virtual memorial to the now demolished Brutalist landmark.

AR App

TGH-48: Nothing can happen here

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Savin Sever’s parking garage, one of his masterpieces, is characterised by a distinct duality: it is a revered example of modernist architecture of the 1960s and at the same time a neglected and “useless” building. With a sonic drive through the garage, the Nonument Group drew attention to the specific structure of the building, which is not only architecturally fascinating, but, even in its supposedly problematic present existence, full of vitality and individual improvisations. Through an open reading, the structure already offers the changing city around it a platform for renewed, technologically up-to-date, socially engaged and city-forming content.

sound drive-in, performance