Oldal 383 [383]
OCR
The Familiar Converted into the Other values consciously intended by their makers, but radiate new forms of value formed in the collective, political unconscious of their beholders. As objects of surplus value, of simultaneous over—and underestimation, these stand at the interface of the most fundamental social conflicts” (Mitchell 2005: 105). The Otherness in monumental art and the othering process itself differ from the ways of creating the familiar and the Other in other media. As a rule, monuments do not serve to create and propagate images of the Other. In this sense, the Other is ‘invisible’ within monumental art. The places on the pedestals are reserved (or at least used to be reserved) for the familiar. Only at a certain moment in time is process of othering triggered, gradually advancing over time. Monumental representations in stone do not change, but rather a transformation occurs in the images they perpetuate. As a result, the familiar becomes converted into the Other. This process takes place on the level of the consciousness of the viewers. No small role in the process of othering, in the context of monumental art, is played by, among others, the physical space in which a monument is situated. What is significant is that the process is bipolar. Not only does the space influence the monument, the monument can also influence the othering of the space. The physical relationships taking place between the object and the viewer are also important. This is the characteristic that singles out monumental art from among all other types of representation. Images of the Other in the context of monumental art do not need to be perceivable directly and by all. However, this does not mean that they do not exist or that they do not function within social imagination. This is what the specific perversity of the monumental images of the familiar and the Other consists in: the fact that they are divided and, simultaneously, inextricably connected. References Bauman Z. 2000. Ponowoczesnosé jako Zrédto cierpieñ (Postmodernity and its Discontents’). Warszawa: Sic!. Demski D. 2013. Playing With Otherness: Within and Beyond Stereotypes in Visual Representations. In: Demski D., Sz. Kristóf I. & Baraniecka-Olszewska K. (eds) Competing Eyes: Visual Encounters with Alterity in Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest: L'Harmattan, pp. 68-99. Eco U. 2011. Wymyslanie wrogéw i inne teksty okolicznosciowe (‘Inventing the Enemy and Other Occasional Writings’). Poznari: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis. Edwards E. & Hart J. 2005. Introduction. In: Edwards E. & Hart J. (eds) Photographs, Objects, Histories. On the Materiality of Images. London & New York: Routledge. Etkind A. 2013. Warped Mourning. Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fabian J. 2000. Time and the Work of Anthropology. Critical Essays 1971-1991. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. 381
