A Monument
to Haze

As part of the European Capital of Culture 2025, the Sonnenberg, a former district of workers in Chemnitz, is planned to be digitized. In order to create a memorial for the smoke that once drifted through the neighborhood, Klub Solitaer e.V. has commissioned the memory culture provider PARA to implement a process, at the end of which a monument of smoke is to be erected. The monument shall serve as a reminder of the fire that no longer burns, of the smoke from chimneys, of past CO2 emissions, of the legacy of the fossil age, of the invisible soot of digital clouds, of the energy of the sun, captured and stored millions of years ago in the coal forests of the Upper Carboniferous and Permian periods.

Participatory Commemoration

The monument, which is intended to be created with the participation of the citizens and under the auspices of the PARA Cloud Office, is meant to cut a path through the thicket of time. A dotted line between the age of combustion and the age of networking. It is meant to remind us of the peculiar era that lay between the third and fourth industrial revolutions, when it was normal to throw into the fire whatever one came across.

Mysterious postcards from multinational art collectives have been arriving at the office's mailing address daily ever since. The PARA Monuments Advisory Board collects, deliberates, catalogs, and publishes everything. You as well are invited to submit a proposal. How do you wish to commemorate the smoke? Do you want to commemorate the smoke at all?

Team

Concept, performance, and artistic direction: PARA. Documentation/video: Tim Rakutt.

Funded by

The Dialogfelder 2021 are funded by the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and the Chemnitz 2025 Cultural Capital Office. This initiative is co-financed by tax revenue based on the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament. The outreach program is financed through support from the Socio-Cultural Fund as part of the program "NEUSTART KULTUR" by the Commissioner of the Federal Government for Culture and Media (BKM).