Monumental Art and Contested Spaces

Meaning is determined by struggle.

In Glasgow, the Gallery of Modern Art is defended by an incongruous equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, of all possible beings. What's he doing there? Why this duke, in this space of all possible spaces, on a horse of all things, indifferent to the art inside, grand on his sidewalk to absolutely no purpose?

The community answers these questions in a direct, irreverent, Glaswegian way: an orange traffic cone atop the Duke's iron noggin, like a Postmodern dunce cap. Saying: he doesn't belong here. We don't feel this way.

TriadCity foregrounds this idea of contested spaces. It's reasonable to say that TriadCity exists in part to highlight this struggle.

I'm working now on a neighborhood called Merchant City, riffing in some ways on Glasgow's real life downtown neighborhood of that name. Our TriadCity version is a series of open plazas punctuated by neighborhood cafes, bookshops, pocket parks, split in part by a winding creek connecting to the University nearby. It's a neighborhood of students, and of buskers, but these are TriadCity students and buskers, so we've got Hugh MacDiarmid reciting poetry, escaped slaves hiding out, and lots of monumental art whose meanings are under contest.

Example: L'Arc d'Ouille, a fallen-down monumental arch celebrating long-forgotten military triumphs, now reclaimed by life, that is by gravity and roses and twining grape vines, a counterposing of this once-grand tribute to death with the life that defeats it in the end. Will the authorities clean this up? In another neighborhood, perhaps. But this is TriadCity NorthWest, these people are the authorities — and the fallen-down monument stays.