Our world is filled with monuments. They continue to stand for a long time, without wavering, against the inevitable oblivion of humanity.
However as time goes by, these monuments become frozen and consequently stagnate our memory to evolve.
By hoping and praying to monuments, are we not avoiding having to really look at ourselves and our actions? As we worship these pillars of the past, we are passively allowing the repetition of history to take place before our eyes.
Something fundamental must be changed. We must break away from the pattern to create a new path for the future.
By listening to the stories of individuals, and by allowing ourselves to reverberate with their voices, we can breath life back into the once frozen memory. The memory, once again alive, will provide us with a guiding thread for us to once again weave our unknown future.
In this monumental 70th year anniversary of the atomic bombing, at a place where the atomic bomb, another monument of humanity, was dropped over human society for the last time, I would like to propose this ANTIMONUMENT MANIFEST.
AUGUST 1ST 2015
by Shinpei Takeda
Published by Nagasaki Art Museum 2015 as part of an exhibition “Shinpei Takeda: Antimonument”