Monument, 29.05. – 27.08.2004

With the mini golf court on Halmtorvet we have suggested how a modern monument can look like. We see the exhibition, of which it is part, as a challenge to the participants, and our contribution wants to be an answer to this challenge.

By building a mini golf court we have wanted to put the emphasis on the people who normally walk by it. This means that both the deficiencies and possibilities of the area around Halmtorvet has been used as a starting point for the developement of the idea. A monument becomes part of a shared history which has other demands than what the producer of the monument maybe had in mind. Looking at it, it may very well be crazy, strange, recognizable, and accessible at the same time.
Mini golf is pure entertainment. And in the same way, the desire to play minigolf is very important to our approach: Real minigolf – and not at some kind of arty substitution – should be played at the mini golf court. Our job is to point at the possibillities which lie in the building of monuments, to be in the city, and, all in all, in making your own contribution. We think that Halmtorvet lacks something which indicates that the space can actually be used. In our opinion, the mini golf court thus becomes an improvement of Halmtorvet, but at the same time we do not demand that entertainment should always be part of a monument.

Like houses, monuments have a long time perspective. But is this necessary? Why not more monuments which stand for a shorter period of time – and for less money? Firstly, in this way you could get more out of the money, secondly you could get some monuments which contributed to the dynamics of shaping a city. For each area, on which a monument should stand, a substitution-cycle could be made: every 5th, 10th, 100th year or never.