Monetarist Monument

The Southern Forest

The sculpture “Monetarist Monument” is conceived as a pseudomonument based on a specific building at the Lindø Shipyard (Malehal Øst). It imitates both the grand utopia and the collapse of that utopia. This is exemplified in parallel with the decline of monumental sculpture in Eastern Europe and, from a Danish perspective, with modernism’s aesthetic-decorative collaboration with heavy industry and a production apparatus that is in the process of disappearing.

Much like at “Grutas Park” in Lithuania, where a private entrepreneur has set up a collection of monuments from the Soviet era, I have established Malehal Øst as a monument in the forest. I want to raise the question of what should happen to the remnants of industrial buildings in contemporary Denmark as industrial production moves abroad. The old industrial buildings can either be transformed into creative hubs, like the Carlsberg site, or be moved to a “graveyard for giants,” which might be located in the forest.