Smashing Monuments

The title may evoke images of gleeful, destructive anarchism, but "smashing" here signals a relationship between people and official city statues that is friendly, jovial, even a little melancholic. Five members of the Indonesian art collective ruangrupa (which directed this year’s controversial Documenta exhibition) each walk to a spot where a monument stands. Once glorious, these figures are now a little hidden, forgotten, unseen. Each one, from Pizza Man to the Welcome Monument, embodies a transformative moment in the nation’s political history, an index of its hopes and dreams. The artists stage conversations with these objects, within a repeated format suited to gallery installation as much as to film projection. Argentine director Díaz Morales’ Smashing Monuments is many things: homespun performance art, social essay, and a pop-cultural study of Indonesian footwear. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)