top of page

"Goddess's

folds of time"

 by Helen Starr

Counter-Monuments:

Memory Practices in Public Space

2025, transcript Verlag

ALTERNATIVE MONUMENT FOR GERMANY

ALTERNATIVE MONUMENT FOR NEUKÖLLN

ALTERNATIVE MONUMENT FOR GERMANY

ALTERNATIVE MONUMENT FOR NEUKöLLN

Helen Starr on the work of Mikala Hyldig Dal:

“The connection between Deleuze's fold concept and the Mikala Hyldig Dal’s time-travelling artwork lies in their mutual emphasis on embracing diverse perspectives and engaging with the intricacies of lived experiences of the past and present. Monuments – an Augmented Reality app – introduces us to time-travelling as a means to navigate and comprehend various social and cultural realities, their synchronisation and merging with and from each other. This involves moving across different cultural frameworks, adopting varying subjectivities and ways of existence. It encourages individuals to step beyond their own viewpoints and empathetically interact with others' perspectives. Integrating the notions of folding space-time and historical recurrence, such as return to matriarchal societies. This underscores the brain's role in perceiving time, history, and reality. These concepts propose that the brain doesn't just passively absorb linear temporal information but actively grapples with intricate folds of time, interpreting recurring historical patterns, and thereby contributing to the construction of personal and collective realities –out of which new cultural concepts can emerge.

Thus, in 2023 through the technology of Augmented Reality, Monuments becomes a totemical addition to The Bismarck Memorial, manifesting another poetic reality. The Bismarck Memorial is dedicated to Prince Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire. To go back to the beginning of Bismarck-time is to understand that Prince Otto von Bismarck was best known for the unification of Germany in 1871 and he was also the architect of the “Congo-conference” of 1884, which divided the African continent into zones for colonial exploitation. This memorial in Berlin portrays Bismarck in his ceremonial garb as Chancellor standing above statues of Atlas, showing Germany's world power status at the end of the 19th century, Siegfried, forging a sword to show Germany's strong industrial and military might, a sibyl reclining on a sphinx and reading the book of history. And horrifically, the metaphorical Goddess Germania crushing a giant, writhing Leopard underfoot as she gazes into the distance. Within the physical symbolism of the Bismarck statue, we find the reality of enacted violence in this cruel artistic gesture. Even in a state of decay, these forms carved in stone retain their beauty. The perception of a monument's beauty is heavily influenced by cultural norms and societal values, and this subjective response is often moulded by the prevailing historical, cultural, and social circumstances of a society.

(...)

bottom of page