Symposium dedicated to hidden, abandoned and forgotten monuments of the 20th century

Politics, society, media and culture change faster than bricks and concrete. History leaves behind either heritage or rubble. But houses and monuments have life beyond the intentions of their builders: decay, underuse, omission, ruin porn and gentrification emerge in place of glorification and remembrance. Something completely new may emerge from these states. We want to direct the attention to the vast residue of abandoned and altered structures that exhibit vigorous afterlife.

This is the extensive archive of ‘Nonuments’ – a concept created to capture the value and condition of these historical structures, extending from abandoned monuments to decaying infrastructure, from speculative destruction of heritage to architectural residue of abandoned futures. Nonuments provide a connection to the past and tell us about the powers that built them.

A hotel, a power plant, a railway, a congress center, a control and dispatch hi-tech center and a former anti-aircraft tower stand neglected, or are in the process of being destroyed. With theoretical, conceptual and art-practice based contributions from around the world, Nonument symposium will address these as well as other European Nonuments. From Cyprus to Prague and from Vienna to Balkan Mountains, Nonuments ceaselessly pose the question of how to engage with them and integrate them.

A two-day art and theory symposium will be held in Prague during the devastating destruction of the Transgas building. We aspire to shape as well as question the language for the process of how to deal with this historic structures here and now.