The event took place as part of the exhibition “Nonument Group: the exhibition is on site” at the Museum of Architecture and Design and as part of the events we organised before the opening of Cukrarna.
Participants were invited to take a special sound drive-in with Nonument Group: a sound drive through Savin Sever’s garage. They were taken individually by taxi up a spiral road, while reflecting on this unusual garage as a universe in its own right.
One of the masterpieces of the architect Savin Sever, Sever’s garage is characterised by a distinct duality: it is both a revered example of quality 1960s architecture and a neglected and “useless” building. With a sonic ride through the garage, Nonument Group drew attention to the specific structure of the building, which is not only architecturally fascinating, but also, even in its supposedly problematic present, full of vital content and individual improvisations. Read openly enough as it is, its specific structure offers a platform for new, technologically contemporary, social and city-forming content to the changing city around it.
Nonument Group’s intervention is based on field observation and interviews with garage users, employees and professionals. The sound walk is based on the story “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges.
Nonument Group deals with the processes of remembering and forgetting in space in different ways. On the one hand, the activities touch upon artistic interventions and, on the other, the creation of a register of nonuments, through which the group researches, maps and archives architecture, monuments, public spaces, infrastructure whose meaning has changed due to social or political changes. Artistic interventions, as opposed to the register, illuminate dilemmas through the aesthetic experience of the present and interrogate the meaning of heritage in space by exploring a variety of artistic approaches. Nonument Group is a research and artistic collective consisting of Neja Tomšič, Martin Bricelj Baraga, Nika Grabar and Miloš Kosec. In their projects, they work with a wide range of co-creators, researchers and artists in an international context. Awards, collaborations and mentions include Baltimore Magazine (Best Public Artwork 2018), The Guardian, Creative Europe, Chemnitz Biennale, Johns Hopkins University, Andy Warhol Foundation for The Visual Arts, Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund, Centre for Central European Architecture. They were also recipients of the Plečnik Medal for their contribution to the enrichment of architectural culture.
