Becoming Ecstatic (a Proposal for a Public Monument)

Photograph 5/9

Work shown at Muu Gallery in Helsinki in the exhibition City Breaks curated in 2005 by Taru Elfving.

Curator Taru Elfving writes:

Simo Brotherus has focused attention in his research to shared urban codes or even ethos that affect our engagement with and within cities. The suggested monument celebrates surrender to ecstacy, letting go of the performed public roles and dependencies on social structures, becoming absorbed in individual emotional and sexual fulfilment. Classical formal language with all its symbolism lends itself to the contemporary performance of the self as the boundaries of public and private as well as cultural and natural blur. Whether considered as realisable or just a suggestion, the proposal works as an affirmative opening for discussion and re-signification. Both as a conceptual and a concrete intervention it makes space for experience that troubles the structures and norms that shape the social realm and our participation in it.

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