©2011 magyarmuzeumok.hu Minden jog fenntartva.

Waiting for the Mo(nu)ment

In the 10th district of Paris, Société Réalist is offering some food for the brain and the eyes. Ferenc Gróf & Jean-Baptiste Naudy, a permanent pair at work, created a commemoration.

Some years ago members of the neighbourhood initiated that Moinon’s wife’s name should be added to the name of the street since until their arrest and deportation they had been living together. The community decided to celebrate this historical moment, this posthumous unification of the family (Rue Jean-et-Marie-Moinon) with setting up a memorial. Hence they asked mediators for help to realize the project. The mediators commissioned the French-Hungarian Société Réalist to create the memorial. They came up with the idea of naming two stars after Jean et Marie Moinon. The City of Paris backed up the plan; however, the International Astronomical Union informed them that people who would be granted with the honour on the basis of their political or military activities have to wait one hundred years before their names are given to a star.

So, Société Réalist decided to commemorate the planned memorial by placing two large granite stones in a park next to the street. The work itself then is nothing more than placing two pieces of rock on a stretch of green.

Reconstructing or replacing the missing identity in itself is a part of realising this work of art and an important gesture is connected to awaiting. In this action lasting until “the coming moment” remembrance is given space, time and nature – just like the two stellar objects. The coming memorial always happens there and then, where and when we lift it into a discourse. Seemingly this is an organic process, but in fact, it is strictly tied to a social consensus. This is how the place and time of the realisation of this memorial become a cause which organises the history of the community. This memorial gives up the right to ideological statements and the right to the author’s primacy – who would be the author of two granite rocks? - and this way serves as a memory liberating memorial. Naming planets after people who are important for us is more the forerunner of a discourse on liberating the memory than a gesture of commemoration in the traditional sense.

En attendant le Mo(nu)ment/Waiting for the Mo(nu)ment, 2014 – 2045

Société Réaliste (Gróf Ferenc & Jean-Baptiste Naudy)

Rue du Chalet public park, Párizs X. district (Metro: Belleville)