Virtual Colloquium: Nausikaä El-Mecky – “Toppled Monuments and the Power of the Void”

We are joined by Nausikaä El-Mecky on Thursday, 30.10.2025 for a presentation titled “Toppled Monuments and the Power of the Void” as part of the Virtual Colloquium sessions at the Berlin University of the Arts. This talk focuses on the void left behind by fallen monuments. Actions against monuments are often framed by detractors to be the mindless removal of culture and history, a simple subtraction – a slashing away that only leaves negative spaces behind. However, when we actually look at many of the monuments that were “vandalised” and “defaced,” it turns out they did not become less than what they had been. Rather, they were transformed, often even accruing additional visual and meaningful layers. By exploring these different actions triggered by voids, the talk examines how an attack on a monument can alchemise absence into a powerful presence.

Nausikaä El-Mecky (PhD 2013, University of Cambridge) is an associate professor/senior lecturer at Pompeu Fabra University and specialises in dangerous images. A dangerous image can be a medieval print, an (almost) forgotten monument or an Instagram post, as long as it triggers fears that this image could disrupt the moral, political or social order. What happens when an image bursts the elitist bubble of the art world and becomes a matter of life and death? In this context, Nausikaä El-Mecky is particularly interested in the grey areas and unexpected subtleties in such a dramatic scenario: the destroyers of images who secretly love the works of art they attack; or the supposedly free society that subtly but mercilessly silences an uncomfortable artist.

She is the author of the forthcoming book The Creation of Dangerous Images in Iconoclasm, Censorship and Vandalism (Routledge) and co-editor of the volume Toppling Things as Memorial Contestation: Spectacle and Affect of Monument Removal (Brill 2025). She founded Rebellious Teaching, a platform dedicated to pioneering and edgy educators in 2029 and leads the Taste of the Algorithm working group targeting algorithmic censorship. She is is an alumna of Die Junge Akademie. In 2025, she was selected by the Falling Walls Foundation as one of 20 young female science champions worldwide.

The talk will be held in person at Design Research Lab, R215, 2nd floor, Einsteinufer 43, 10 587 Berlin. There will also be an online transmission of the presentation on Zoom:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82954605489?pwd=VP3XBDzVogeuQtLWaXbWEFpm9ObxiQ.1

Meeting-ID: 829 5460 5489
Kenncode: 079532