"Counter-Monument and Digital Iconoclasm as Quasi-Sublime Devices"

Starting from Alois Riegl’s seminal monument-theory and notably from both main values conveyed by the monument, that is its eloquence for the present, and its capacity for remembrance, the article puts forward the hypothesis that various memorials presented as counter-monuments and "monumental" contemporary art installations employ techniques of quasi-sublimity between post-minimalism, devices of absence, iconoclastic operations, and the digital sublime. The paradox is that precisely through a monumentality that is often provocative and iconoclastic, the memorial objective is renewed as a contemporary value.