As if this year didn’t already look like a Kubrick movie, mysterious monoliths like the one from 2001: Space Odyssey began to appear around the world. And I bet you didn’t know Berlin had theirs.
The first monolith, found in Utah’s Red Rock Country by some biologists who monitored bighorn sheep from a helicopter, was placed there in 2016.
Original image taken by Patrickamackie2 (Patrick A. Mackie)
Cropped and color adjusted by Chainwit. CC BY-SA 4.0
The strange find quickly became a locked-down place of pilgrimage but was deleted days later by some locals. When questioned by a monolithic pilgrim who was there at the time, they said they were trying to protect the environment. While the bighorn sheep and other critters of Red Rock Country are no doubt relieved by the disappearance of the strange metallic object that has stood mysteriously above them for 4 years, new ones quickly followed.
Just a day after the monolith was removed from Utah, another appeared in Romania, on the hill of Batca Doamnei – a bit poorly constructed but clearly based on that in Utah.
Monoliths around the world
The Romanian monolith also vanished within days, but the meme was now unstoppable: new ones were expected to appear and disappear all over the world. There is even a gold one in Colombia. Monoliths 2020, as they’re called, even have their own Wikipedia page with an up-to-date timeline. You can find it here.
Sadly, it seems most of the monoliths weren’t erected by aliens: artist collectives got credit for some of them, and one in Pittsburgh turned out to be a marketing stunt by the share of a confectionery. But we can never completely rule out the possibility of a giant space embryo appearing in the night sky to deliver us from lockdown.
In a very under-stimulating year, these monoliths seem to have captivated people all over the world and transformed into an interesting new type of meme. They are memes because they are recontextualized and recontextualized reproductions of visual art pieces posted on the Internet. But they differ from other memes by being physical objects rather than digital images. How far we have come!
A quick word on semantics
Before continuing, I should mention that technically these are not monoliths. Monolith is a combination of the Greek words mono and lithos, and is generally used for large stones that come out of the ground, often formed naturally, such as Uluru in Australia.
Humans have also been erecting monoliths since at least the Stone Age, a time when everyone really loved stones. These more or less resemble those that make up Stone Henge. However, calling the stones of Stone Henge monolithic would also be somewhat controversial, as there is more than one. The most etymologically valid term would be megalith, which simply means large stone.
On the other hand, one could argue that metals are only special stones: to get metal, we usually start with a piece of stone that contains some of it. The smelting process removes almost all of the non-metallic elements, but when does metal rich in metal stop being a stone? If I eat the entire filling of an Oreo but leave the outer shells out, do I end up with two cookies or a partial Oreo?
As you can see, what is and is not a monolith is not as obvious as it first seems, and those this article is about certainly not, at least depending on how the word is meant to be used. On the other hand, it’s a lot of fun saying monolith, and I don’t get the chance to do that very often, so I’m going to keep calling them like everyone else because that’s how languages are. evolve. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
Berlin’s mysterious monolith
As is the case with many other memes, Berlin is ahead of the curve when it comes to monoliths. Our city had its own mysterious monolith, and it couldn’t be more true to stereotypes: it’s darker and cheaper than the rest but at least it was in place before it was cool.
The Berlin monolith was erected last winter on the remaining pillar of Brommybrücke, a small artificial island on the Spree. It was created as a public art performance by Cacophony Society Berlin, a situationist art collective linked to the original events of Burning Man. Not wanting to let people guess the origins of their creation, they even documented the event:
Botond Vitos, the founder of the Cacophony Society Berlin, claims their monolith was made from polystyrene recycled from nearby construction sites. The show was “an ironic interpretation of Berlin’s alternative culture, including some of the clubs that provide a show for tourist boats sailing on the Spree.” They also added a sign calling for the construction of a footbridge over the Spree.
The Berlin monolith remained at least until this summer. However, just before the monoliths went viral around the world, someone also decided to protect the environment of it.
We will never know what would have happened if the Brommybrücke monolith remained in place. Maybe a spaceship would have landed? But his fate shows us one thing: currently, there is no monolith in Berlin. So if you have free time and metalworking tools, please do not use them to make a monolith and place it in a scenic place because it is illegal and it scares the sheep.
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Text: Daniel Corsano
Daniel Corsano is a journalist, freelance writer and art critic living and working in Berlin.
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