Icons Made Without Hands

On the 19th of April 2016, Boris Johnson, then mayor of the city of London, unveiled a reproduction of the Arch of Palmyra. As the crusade of the Islamic State bulldozed through the land of the Levant, one of its architectural victims reappeared on the steps of Trafalgar Square. Shrouded by a satin cloth, stood one of the finest physical manifestations of virtual archeology. Caught in-between the physical and the digital, the historical artefact - our memory, had finally been completely destroyed. If cultural heritage is the beating heart of a society, what happens when its representatives are replaced by surrogates? David Haack Monberg’s solo exhibition Icons Made Without Hands explores the stages in which ruins travel; from dust to data and back again. David Haack Monberg, born 1992, is a graduate of The Dirty Art Department at the Sandberg Institute, 2019, and Funen Art Academy, 2017. The work of David Haack Monberg moves between history and fiction to explore how the technological replacement of artefacts summons a more total annihilation of memory than that caused by the physical destruction resulting from iconoclastic terror. At the finisage, equipped with a hard-disk containing the total digital footprint behind the exhibition, from backups to polished .psd files, Jesper Nørbæk will produce second iteration of the performance Det kolde hårde bliver umærkeligt, når jeg holder det tæt på. The work is a performance comprised of data merging into sonic language using machine learning. The exhibition is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation. OK Corral is supported by The Obel Family Foundation. Thank you VAK - Vestsjællands Arbejdende Kunstværksteder.