Project

ERC Advanced Grant Horizon 2020 Visual Scepticism: Towards an Aesthetic of Doubt

Project period: 2021-2026

Principal Investigator: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Margit Kern

In early summer of 2020, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, numerous monuments were demolished around the world. These iconoclastic acts raise a pressing question: How should this historical legacy  be addressed? In 1997, Norbert Huse, a specialist in the preservation of monuments, spoke in this context of ‘uncomfortable monuments’, and in 2009, Sharon Macdonald referred to ‘difficult heritage’. Given that monuments related to fascism and colonialism are also aesthetic manifestations of the inhumane ideologies held by these regimes, the frequently adopted solution – namely to install an information panel alongside the monument – seems unpersuasive: in these instances, the rhetorical force embodied in these monuments remains present in public space without contradiction. Through the concept of visual scepticism, this project proposes a different approach to dealing with such monuments: we propose that they be reframed aesthetically without being completely erased as repositories of historical memory.

The project pursues three objectives:

First, we will use the term ‘visual scepticism’ in order to explore the basic question of whether visual media are capable of calling themselves into doubt. Can they draw upon their own internal contradictions in order to generate knowledge? The thesis of the project is that such forms of knowledge production occur on a purely visual level. Subjected to analysis will be the ways in which images generate internal tension and operate with dialogical structures, thereby giving rise to new knowledge.

Secondly, we will seek to demonstrate with reference to the monuments of colonialism and fascism how the memories they represent are effective not only in relation to content, but instead aesthetically as well. Also investigated will be the appeal to spatial experience articulated by such monuments, as well as the bodily perceptions of beholders.

Third, we will analyse monuments that have been successfully reframed: the aim here is to demonstrate how artistic interventions can provide aesthetic responses to inhumane ideologies.

The aim – in conjunction with project publications – is to generate a systematization of ‘visual scepticism’, at the same time compiling a databank of cases of redesigned monuments that could eventually serve as the basis for a ‘Centre for Difficult Heritage’. Within this research framework, however, the project also aims to demarcate the limits of visual scepticism Is visual scepticism a useful tool for coming to terms with ‘difficult’ heritage? Can it be deployed to limit the rhetorical potency of such monuments while at the same time preserving them? What can the concept achieve, and where does it fall short?

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101018890)