In the corner of Austurvöllur, the small green square in front of the Icelandic parliament, a heavy boulder rests on the pavement with a black cone driven straight into the top of it. The stone is split open along the line of the cone, as if something patient had finally pushed too hard, and a small plaque underneath gives the line that earns the work its name. When the government violates the rights of the people, it reads, insurrection is for the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties. The sentence is from the French Revolution.
The piece is by the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra and it was unveiled in 2012, on the third anniversary of the protests that took place on this very lawn through the early months of 2009. After the Icelandic banks collapsed in 2008 and dragged a large part of the country down with them, people came out into Austurvöllur in their hats and coats with whatever they had to hand, including a great many kitchen pots and pans, and they stood here and banged them until the government fell. The country, half in joke and half in earnest, calls it the Pots and Pans Revolution.
The cone itself is doing more than it first looks like it is doing. Sierra borrowed the shape from the tall pointed hat, the capirote, that the Inquisition forced condemned people to wear in public to shame them. He took the symbol that was used to silence ordinary people and drove it through a rock, the way a peaceful protest sometimes does manage to split open a system that looked immovable from the outside.
It is a plain memorial and it sits exactly where it has to. There is no fence around it, no museum signage and no opening hours. You walk along the side of the parliament, see the broken stone in the grass, and either notice it or not. The members of parliament who walk past it every working day know exactly what it is for.
Take a look at it the next time you cross Austurvöllur, ideally on a working day, when the square has its civic mood on. From there it is a short walk to the cathedral, the parliament itself and on down to the pond. There is no fee, no queue and no key, which is also part of the point.
There are few better photographs to send to a person you trust on a stubborn day than a boulder with a black cone in it on the lawn outside a parliament. Sign it with a careful word and the picture does the rest.