A historic first, CIRCA and Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters present A Monument A Ruin by Cassandra Press, a publishing platform founded in 2016 by critically acclaimed artist Kandis Williams. The new work – a short video-lecture in which ancient street inscriptions collide with contemporary protest graffiti to question the nature of monuments – will appear every evening throughout February at 20:22 on London’s iconic Piccadilly Lights and broadcast across a network of screens in Melbourne, Seoul and Tokyo. 

In the wake of Black Lives Matter’s global uprisings in 2020, the use and symbology of graffiti in public spaces have taken on new and powerful significance prompting an urgent reflection on the meaning and manifestation of “collective history” in the public domain, particularly in the context of modern monuments, memorials and statues tied to slavery and colonialism. 

A Monument A Ruin draws on the recovery by archaeologists of an exceptional amount of tituli picti – an ancient form of urban graffiti, including slogans and electoral propaganda (programmata) – painted across the streets of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, buried under volcanic ashes in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. These inscriptions provide a dense narrative of the daily concerns of Pompeian society, including the political agency of groups such as women and slaves who were not permitted to vote. 

In Cassandra Press’ new commission for CIRCA, the ancient street markings are overlaid with contemporary issues of political agency and visibility of socially oppressed groups in today’s Western societies. Evolving from Williams’ participation in Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters – the first research and contemporary art programme commissioned by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii -, A Monument A Ruin constructs a complex composite of layered photographs, footage, texts and audio that unravel with movement and dialogue to bridge the past and present into simultaneous focus. Photographer Brandon English collaborated with Cassandra Press on a new series of photographs shot in situ at Pompeii over two nights in Summer 2021, projecting his visual accounts of the protests and assemblies in 2020 by New York abolitionist groups onto different buildings and frescoes in Pompeii, and now appearing on buildings around the world this February.

Founded in 2016, Cassandra Press is an extension of the multidisciplinary practice of Kandis Williams. What began as a publishing platform to highlight texts on issues of race, feminism, power, and aesthetics, Cassandra Press has since grown to become a multifaceted educational resource, hosting virtual workshops and organizing artist residencies alongside its publishing program. Over the past five years, Cassandra Press has published thirty-one readers which function as spiral-bound anthologies presenting theory, history, sociology, and criticism by a panoply of intellectuals, activists, and editorial sources. In 2020 the platform began the Cassandra Classrooms project, a series of immersive courses led by artists, intellectuals, and educators who share their vital knowledge and invite participants into generative investigations. Classroom sessions thus far have featured Manuel Arturo Abreu, Rhea Dillon and Yaniya Lee, among many others.

Kandis Williams is a visual artist whose practice spans collage, performance, writing, publishing, and curating. She explores and deconstructs critical theory around race, nationalism, authority, and eroticism. Her work examines the body as a site of experience while drawing upon her background in dramaturgy to envision spaces that accommodate the varied biopolitical economies, which inform how form and movement might be read. Williams establishes indices that network parts of the anatomy, regions of Black diaspora, as well as communication and obfuscation, relaying how popular culture and myth are interconnected. The artist is also the founder and editor-at-large of Cassandra Press, an artist-run publishing and educational platform producing lo-fi printed matter, classrooms, projects, artist books, and exhibitions. The platform’s intention is to disseminate ideas, distribute new language, propagate dialogue- centering ethics, aesthetics, femme driven activism, and black scholarship.