Book Description

What is a monument? How do we make them and where do we put them? Who decides what gets remembered and how does it shape the narrative of our history? I spent a semester thinking pretty deeply about these questions as a research fellow for Monument Lab-a public art and history project that asked these critical inquiries on a citywide scale. At ten lab sites across Philadelphia, Monument Lab aimed to engage anyone and everyone who wanted to be part of this conversation. The prompt: "What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia?"I worked at my lab site each week, posting up in a public space, hoping Philadelphians would want to talk. And they did. Everyone I spoke to had a story, and they all wanted to be heard. Ranging from hilarious to heartbreaking, the laughter and tears of those strangers has taught me a lot about our need to be heard. To be authentically listened to.We'd do our best to capture their stories and monument ideas on proposal forms. About 5,000 were collected across the city. They were hand-drawn and written by people who celebrated and mourned things that were important to them, who cared and remembered in their own personal ways. After the exhibition wrapped, I would spend hours poring through these proposals. Not because I had to, but because they were absolutely captivating. Their sketches and scribbled words captured people's lives, values, and meanings in a uniquely powerful way.I felt connections to proposals that reflected my own personal stories. It made me think about our shared meanings with the strangers of our city. We may pass on a crowded street or sit next to each other on the subway. Or we may never step foot into each other's neighborhoods despite being only a few miles apart. We may be decades apart in age and worlds apart in experience. But we do share Philadelphia. And what this city means to us can sometimes overlap and unite us.So that's where this project began. At the intersection of personal stories and shared places. More questions emerged. How do our personal histories shape "official history"? If we don't write our stories down, how will be they be remembered? What is important to me? What do I want to be heard and remembered?These are my Philadelphia stories, mapped from North to South along the Broad Street Line. The stops I've chosen mean something to me. They're the streets and parts of the city that hold my Philadelphia memories. They have been the sites of some of the most beautifully ordinary moments of my life.At the end of each of stop's story is a Monument Lab proposal, as submitted by a stranger. The location of each proposal sometimes sits far from the location of my story, but the meaning of each is shared. Across zip codes and gender and race and age, this common ground threads us together. Our meanings and our city connect us.This is my monument to Philadelphia.