The Voices Project

counter-monuments “re-enact discourses of memory that were rejected, omitted or outright silenced by the (urban/local/national) collectivity and make virtue of what would otherwise be deemed difficult or inconvenient past.” – Natalia Krzyzanowska

#monugogy (2018)

Social media experiment and video installation

#Monugogy is a community-driven project intended to bring Indigenous perspectives on monument into a permanently active online repository. By enlisting the help of what’s come to be known as “Native Twitter,” an open Call for Tweets pertaining to monuments past, current and future culled Indigenous responses from across North America into one bot-driven Twitter timeline via the #Monugogy hashtag. The subsequent video installation piece created from these responses is intended to give Indigenous voices presence and act as its own looming monument to those voices. Due to the open-ended nature of its source, this installation represents only a portion of the content of its online counterpart.

Monugogy II (2018)

Altered images recreated as postcards, postcard rack

Monugogy II speaks to pubic opinions and perspectives on monuments and the figures/events they represent. Commentaries and facts on monuments have been sourced via Google reviews, blogs, library archives and thesis research. These comments and facts have been paired up with archived photos of monuments altered to mimic vintage postcards. The intention is to reframe monuments around us and question how monuments, much like souvenirs and post cards, have functioned to influence and inform Canada’s national identity.