Unfortunate Monument
November 2009
ATA Window Gallery
San Francisco, CA
Curated by Liz Wing

Beginning with a photograph found in a de-accessioned library book celebrating early Nazi infrastructure (published in Germany, 1934), Unfortunate Monument aims to pull forward a multiplicity of moments embedded in this singular image.

For the ATA Window, a projection of the image, doubled, is paired with German composer Paul Hindemith’s Trauermusik (Mourning Music). Striking in its cartoon-like style, the monument in the photograph gives clues to its origin by way of date, language, and its incriminating crown of shovels. As with all the other images in the de-accessioned book, it is a pristine, two-sided paste-in card with German text on the reverse. This card, in particular, celebrates the completion of the newest German motorway. The final sentence of the text on the card roughly translates: Further Works are in Preparation. Our ominous understanding of the image is connected to our present location in time, as we witnessed these industrious German shovels dig pits for mass graves just a few years after they contributed to the modern infrastructure of the autobahn.

Through the quiet, mournful tone of the music coupled with the image projection, Unfortunate Monument aims to reconstruct a new monument in the storefront window on Valencia Street. A temporary monument that speaks to the power of time-construction in collective social histories.