The Precarity of the Monster. Monuments for Unstable Times

Abstract

In response to the contemporary condition of precarity and liquidity, in which little remains stable beyond the continuous production of waste, this text proposes a reflection on the kinds of monuments capable of representing our era: unstable, spontaneous, ephemeral, and constructed from discarded materials. To this end, the article takes as its point of departure Monstruo, an artistic creation project developed in collaboration with Ignacio Pérez-Jofre. The project not only reuses waste abandoned in urban environments but also engages with spaces that, having fallen outside the productive fabric of the city, have been relegated to the status of illegal dumping grounds. Abandoned factories, deserted housing developments, wastelands—spaces where that which must remain hidden is discarded. Like a monster, such places challenge the integrity of a system and warn of underlying dangers. They are the products of a consumerist logic which, founded upon excess and waste, depends on the continual expulsion and disposal of material in order to sustain its own fluidity.