Jillian Mcmanemin: Toppled Monuments Archive, The Collective And Sculpture Kills

Abstract

Toppled Monuments Archive (2020–ongoing; TMA) is a web-based, artist-run archive that documents the political and cultural movements and associated ephemera around defaced, removed, relocated or destroyed monuments. This interview with artist, writer, and founder of TMA, Jillian McManemin, examines the frameworks and polemics underpinning the project. The project’s core purpose is to document monument-centered activism in public space, but TMA also encapsulates the online dimensions and, at times, dilemmas for contemporary activism and archiving practices. The online format for TMA has enabled a global community of contributors to form, at the same as it demonstrates, the paradoxes of censorship and risk in online media spaces. Aware too of the current inclination to erect new monuments, the discussion considers the way monuments function, behave, and influence society and the polemics and responses they generate. The multiple geographic and political contexts informing the archive are addressed, as is the project’s collectivist ethos and method of content generation. McManemin’s forthcoming book Sculpture Kills is also discussed, with its intersecting themes of subjecthood, objecthood, and contemporary sculptures that have caused fatal accidents.