1- What originally inspired you to create the Minimum Monument?

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NA: I developed the concept of the Minimum Monument project when researching for my master’s thesis in Arts, in 2003: ‘An aesthetic proposal of the minimum inserted as a monument in the city’. We know that one of the characteristics of the monument is that it is erected by the power of the dominant to commemorate their achievements. We can say that monuments are the narrative of official history. As all power or victory entails the defeat and oppression suffered by the dominated or defeated, monuments in their honor also incorporate this contradiction, being referred to by Walter Benjamin as monuments of barbarism.

 Thus, I found in public monuments a synthesis of my uneasiness: historic commemoration as being too distant from the ordinary people. The main discussion and poetic reflection are the intersection between local history and public monuments. I sought to reconcile the public and private spheres, the subjective self, and the city. I proposed an anti- monument.

 

I, therefore, subverted one by one the characteristics of the official monument. In the place of the grand scale, widely used as ostentation of power, I proposed a minimal scale. In the place of the hero’s face, a tribute to the anonymous observer, to the passerby, who identifies himself with the process, in a kind of celebration of life, of the recognition of the tragic, of the heroic in each human trajectory.  In the place of durable materials, I proposed the ice sculptures that last about thirty minutes - they don’t crystallize memory, neither separate death from life. They have fluidity and movement and rescue the original function of monuments: to remind us we die.

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Besides disappearing, in opposition to the permanent public fulfillment of the traditionally static sculpture, Minimum Monument can be understood as the “presential art” – you need to be present at the time and place of the intervention. The experience of placing the ice sculptures and their melting process is public, but at the same time, personal, presential, not transferable. The happening remains on the viewer’s memory and pictures.  The ice melts in chronological time but it emphasizes the metaphor of another time, the length of spatial time lived by the body. It proposes duration as an experience. Thus, it carries out a poetic interruption of the city’s daily routine.

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2 - In what ways have your Brazilian roots influenced the development of your art? 

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NA: The “Brazilian roots” are diverse. We are mainly the result of European colonization (all colonization is violent) combined with barbarism against native peoples and the enslavement of African peoples that lasted more than three hundred years. We are a diverse culture with high levels of social inequality.

As a tropical country, we are always under construction with a vocation for the modern and without tradition – "Here everything seems to still be under construction  and yet it is a ruin.” We work with the precarious, with improvisation that allows for freedom of experimentation. In this sense, the ice material fitted in with Minimum Monument and gave it poetic support.

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At the same time the image of the sculptures come from my subjective experience. They stem from a memory of time and space in my small town between mountains.

 

Women sitting on the doorstep or on the sidewalk.

Light at midday. Immense blue.

Everything is idle - time weighs down and immobilizes gestures.

The women just stare

They are living  the present.

Just figures sitting watching the world - crossing.

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3 - What does the term 'anti-monument' mean to you, and how does it relate to your work?

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NA: answered in question number 1

 

4 - What was the first moment you realized that you had made something special?

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NA: I confess that I don't feel like I'm doing anything special. Minimum Monument has overflowed the contemporary art circuit and has become much bigger than me. So I follow what the work asks of me, I do what I have to do and, yes, the call of the world still amazes me today.

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5 - What are some of the most memorable reactions you have received from spectators?

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NA: I can say that people’s reactions are similar in many cities, in different countries, but what differ them is intensity. At Praça Dom João I, in Porto, at Praça da Sé, in São Paulo, at Gendarmenmarket, in Berlin, at Silkeborg in Denmark, or more strongly in Chamberlain Square, people participate intensively and the melting process experience is lively shared by everybody – it reads as a kind of collective body, as poetry, as a current event beyond verbal language –geography doesn't seem to exist then.

 

As an example, here's what happened during an intervention in Birmingham-UK. The father of a 15-year-old autistic son sent me five wonderful drawings and a box of chocolates by post at his son's request. His son was blown away by Minimum Monument. Receiving those drawings was something extraordinary.

 

A woman in Tokyo's Ueno market, distressed by the disappearance of the sculptures, took one to keep in her freezer.

 

The affection I received in Taipei, with dozens of gifts from the volunteers who worked with me to make the sculptures.

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6 - Is it hard to watch your little community of people melt away time and time again?

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NA: In fact, this disappearance shared with the public from different cities and countries is a learning experience. Because Minimum Monument is a piece that concentrates more on the process than on the art object itself, the work has a fluidity that incorporates new meaning upon confronting new interventional spaces to be occupied. The arrangements for the daily production of the sculptures also bring in new meanings. It has an effect in the lives of people who work throughout the process, those who participate in the action and it has an impact in my life, in my worldview, my relationship with time.

 

7 - Why did you choose to present this work in public space?

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NA:  Because it opposes the concept of monument, and monuments are in public spaces. Even if it is to criticize the monument, it needs to be in public space.

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8 - What do you believe is the power of art in public spaces?

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NA: I can affirm, after carrying out 27 interventions with the Minimum Monument around the world, that the work of art has a profound and immediate impact, with the direct experience of the melting shared with the public. Not only the melting at the time of the intervention, but also in the collective production process.

Among the numerous experiences of public feedback, I highlight three interventions that were carried out in the field of education and which had an extraordinary depth:

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1- At the Alsaciene school in Paris-France through the invitation of Chiqui Vázquez Salvadores and Florence Lacombe, who is also an art historian and art critic.

The intervention took place on March 22, World Water Day. Lacombe wrote about the pedagogical and transformative effects of the interdisciplinary experience with students from different areas, more closely with music students, who also worked in the manufacture of ice sculptures, during 6 days, and in the composition and performance of music presented along with the Minimum Monument inside the school. The testimony of the public school can be seen in the video. https://vimeo.com/284048000

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2- At the Universities of Vermont and Mildleberry-UE (October 22 and 23, 2018) at the invitation of Professor and Researcher Maria Alessandra Woolson (teaches at the University of Vermont for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Honors College, and is an affiliate of its GUND Institute for Environment).

It was an extraordinary experience to respond to the invitation of these teachers who work and reflect deeply on climate issues and believe in the pedagogical power of art work as a possibility for reflection and change. Nele Azevedo's Minimum Monument | Program in Spanish | The University of Vermont (uvm.edu)

Wolsoon published two essays about this experience, understanding art as an instrument of sensitive knowledge:

 "The arts and humanities convey unique opportunities for social, environmental, and historical interpretations. They allow students to understand the environment's problems, not only as an ecological emergency, but rather as symptomatic of a broader crisis of modern intellectual thought and modern societies, as a crisis of modern ethics."

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9 - Why does your work specifically require the public space to be effective?

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NA: because public space is the space of encounter, the meeting of differences, or where differences can meet.

 

10 - How do you decide on the specific locations within a city to place your ice figures?

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NA:  The sites are chosen for their historical importance or for the places where people live together. In the case of Tilburg, I was honored to be invited to take part in the festival, and I think it's important to be present with an action that reminds us of "climate change".

 

11 - What is the power of the temporary nature of your piece?

NA:

 

12 - How do you see the role of public art in addressing social and environmental issues?

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NA: The climate emergency issue came through the eyes of the public and was incorporated into the original concept of the work. In the intervention carried out in Florence, Italy, in 2008, the images of the Minimum Monument released were read by internet users as “army of melting men” or “melting men” and spread all over the internet. Due to this interpretation, I was invited by WWF Germany to make an intervention in Berlin in September of 2009. This invitation was the beginning of my reflection about climate change in connection with the Minimum Monument. Something became clear: we, humans, are at risk of disappearing from the planet. Here is a possible contemporary monument. With the World Climate Conference-3  taking place simultaneously in Geneva, the massive publicity of images of the Minimum Monument granted international extension to the work. It was the image of the day worldwide. The work overflowed the contemporary art circuit.

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We are experiencing the climate emergency now, in 2024, with much more intensity and awareness than in 2009. This is the issue of our time. The fact is that we are threatened with disappearing from planet Earth.

 

13 - What do you hope the audience of Kaapstad Festival 2024 feel when they see the Minimum Monument in Tilburg?

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NA:  That the population enjoys the Minimum Monument, that they can share their impressions and reflections with us.

 

São Paulo, July 5, 2024.

 

Néle Azevedo