essay by Caroline Corbetta

The last time I went to New York my hotel window was facing the Hudson. It would have been an amazing
sight if, far away, off to the right bank, standing on its little Island, the Statue of Liberty wouldn?t have been
there. There it was with its ghostly presence - nothing to do with its innocuous tourist reproductions. Luckily
a dense mist fell on the river. Otherwise I would have closed the curtains. The statue is almost an
unbearable sight for me, especially due to its movie dipictions, such as the final one in the Planet of the
Apes (1968) where the humans find the iconic monument?s head and other fragments on a beach, all signs
of a self destructive, extinct civilization. The same symbolism is the Statue of Liberty?s broken head which
appears on the poster of another cult science fiction movie 1997 Escape from New York (1981). The image
of a broken monument is one of the strongest dystopic images existing, especially the anthropomorphic
one. A monument, for better or for worse, embodies a collective ideal and utopian imagery. Sequences of
the destruction of Saddam Hussein?s statues, as well as Ceausescu?s, just to name a couple of a long
series, gave us testimony of a sudden power change, as well as a different self-representation of a society.

Luckily, we don?t have to free ourselves from such an oppressive power (and it seems we are far away, but
not far enough, from self-destruction) and we nourish a double feeling towards urban monuments, and their
traditional embodiment of shared values both political and aesthetic. We are hyper-individualists and it is
hardly possible for us to find unanimous agreement under a monument?s shadow. Paradoxically, there?s a
unifying moment where we debate on public art. They are ugly and/or questionable (therefore removable)
even if they are signed by prestigious names. For example, let?s refer to the monument to Pertini by Aldo
Rossi and, most recently, L.O.V.E. by Maurizio Cattelan. Both monuments are installed in Milan, and both,
quite remarkably, are in transit. The first one, after twenty two years of disputed presence close to Via
Manzoni, is about to be moved, with not yet a specific destination, most likely to make space to a
commercial activity. And only now, while a loose red and white tape surrounds its huge cubical frame,
many people are fighting for it. The second one - intentionally controversial - should have been left in the
middle of Piazza Affari from where it mocked the ambiguous exchange only for a month (i.e. until last
October 24th). But it is still there while I write these thoughts, waiting to be assigned its final destination;
while the artist, who is corroborated by Internet polls, wants to donate it to the city, only if it could stay in
that very Piazza.

Public art is a hot topic. It is also a thorny issue because of its intrinsic public nature: as a matter of fact, it?s
one thing  to look for art in galleries and museums (where it?s customary to discuss around the concept of
anti-monumentality, or more precisely, a-monumentality, which is a quite vague notion attempting to
represent our present time and its multidirectional desires), quite another to bump into art while walking on
a public street. But they are somehow stimulating. They help us to understand that in our consumerist and
perpetual present - where the preservation of memory and the planning of the future are both reduced to
goods or marketing strategies- we still long for public art work that represents the society that produces
and exhibits them. Amongst such projects experimented with in the last few years, there are two revealing
trends. The first one is related to the transitory nature of the are, such as the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar
Square in London: a long time empty plinth is now adorned with works commissioned to famous artists in
rotation. This is a Solomonic choice which makes temporariness an effective trigger for/of public debate.
The other trend is related to virtuality, which is masterly investigated by artist Angelo Plessas. After a dip
dive in the Internet, which represents for Angelo a “real” environment such as a gallery (with the advantage
of a disproportioned visibility), the artist presents a physical and tangible translation of some of his
websites that have been realized in the last ten years; diverse works that we could define as  poetic
interactive animations, embellished with titles that emphasize the deep humanistic intention of the project.
Each of those websites is already a monument, in the most contemporary sense, because it is a work of art
that stands in a new public field, the Internet, without imposing meanings from above, but actually
proposing itself as a recipient of diverse stances, even opposite ones. In order to make his reasoning even
more layered, playing with the ambiguity between reality and virtuality, (which is nowadays typical of the life
of millions of people, who not only shop online but also establish diverse relationships through the
web), Angelo has created these “offline monuments”:

MeLookingAtYou.com, DoubleFaced.com, ZigZagPhilosophy.com taken directly from the websites,
becoming urban and three-dimensional. They are participatory and playful sculptures, as the “originals”
from which they are derived. They are to be installed in the streets of Milan, in places that have been
coherently choosen with Google Street View. The “offline monuments” are projects that have two levels of
users (local and global) and usage (real and virtual) that often get interconnected and generate interesting
questions on the nature of contemporary monument.

Muddling it up even more, Angelo Plessas increases the exhibition structure with some signs that
“advertise” the actual realization of those monuments, works of art where real and illusionary elements
synchronize to form a new aesthetic dimension. Moreover, the only real monument physically present in
the exhibition, “The Monument to An Online Persona”, is two-dimensional like an online icon. Plesas
describes this as such: «I borrowed the "face" of this imaginary person I call Leo Sky which I devised as a
board member of the Angelo Foundation - my imaginary foundation.  The star "represents" that everybody
with the internet now can become famous and a star. For example you create an interesting blog and you
become famous in the most convenient way even if you are in the most remote place in the world. There
are more connotations in this monument like the crown/mouth can be seen as the  "www",  and that can be
seen as representing the internet way of doing things which makes everybody a "king" of his castle. I also
chose this because a star is the national symbol of Italy». Has Angelo realized that his star shaped Leo
resembles the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty?s head? I really believe so, as he declares to be interested
in exploring a new genre of monumentality, where the classic notions of time and space are questioned.