A Monumental Shift
An augmented reality “statue” of the 18th century Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture, placed in Columbus Circle. Image by Movers and Shakers This interview is a part of “Memory Loss,” a series co-published with Urban Omnibus.
For better and worse, monuments are obdurate things. Statues are built to last, stubbornly reminding us of conflicted legacies, enduring injustices and, occasionally, the power of truth and reconciliation. Yet their very solidity implies an imbalance of power in how history is written. Statues are neither easily created nor removed—though with shared strength and conviction, they can sometimes be toppled.
Movers and Shakers NYC, an artist/activist collective-turned-social enterprise, have adopted a different strategy in the struggle against the persistent inequities cast in stone and metal across the United States. Emerging in 2017 to challenge the vast racial and gender disparities of New York City’s statues—which overwhelmingly represent white, male historical figures—Movers and Shakers wields immersive technologies to rewrite and redistribute the monument as we know it. In late February 2020, the company launched the first iteration of their Monuments Project: Kinfolk, an augmented reality mobile app that allows users to “install” interactive digital models in any location with a horizontal surface, from the dining room table to the sidewalk. Starting with seven icons of Black history—four of which are sponsored by a new Netflix documentary series—Movers and Shakers hopes to grow the Monuments Project into a sprawling, collaboratively-built archive of augmented artifacts to underrepresented histories, both individual and collective.
Where they hope their app will be used the most, however, is the classroom. Featuring text, images, links to
