CLOSED TO PUBLIC: American Monument exhibit @ The Beall in Irvine

While there are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 at UCI at this time, our greatest priority is the health and well-being of our students, faculty, audiences, and staff.   UCI decided all campus events and  productions for the Spring 2020 quarter will be audience-free. 

The American Monument at The Beall Center for Art + Technology at UCI is a participatory inter-media monument conceived as nomadic and continually expanding, moving across the country year-to-year, “unveiled” at universities, museums, storefronts, community centers, and churches. The Beall Center installation is the first full iteration of the project.

In 2018, American Monument initiated an extensive Freedom of Information Act request process. Close readings of use-of-force reports, prosecutor reports, witness testimonies, 911 calls, and bystander and body/dash cam videos have revealed a consistent and disturbing problem: police use of white dominant cultural constructions and stereotypes of “Blackness,” mined from pop culture, are employed to justify fatal violence.

The centerpiece of American Monument, Archive I, is an interactive sound sculpture.  Encountering a grid of silently spinning black and white turntables on pedestals, visitors may choose to play an acetate record of audio materials gleaned from record requests, setting the apparatus and sound in motion. Each turntable represents one police murder.

Artist:  Lauren Woods |  Curator:  Kimberli Meyer