Following the mysterious appearance of a 10ft (3m) tall shining steel obelisk in a remote location in a Utah canyon in 2020, found by ranchers carrying out an aerial count of the region’s bighorn sheep, the world seemed briefly seized by monolithomania. First another appeared in California, and then others started turning up internationally, in Romania, Ukraine and the UK (FT401:4+14, 402:24, 406:26). This sparked fevered speculation about their potential alien origin, inspired by memories of the black alien structures in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A. One, on Glastonbury Tor, had “not Banksy” etched on it, giving a nod to another equally mysterious artist. Others in the UK popped up on Dartmoor, in the centre of the Merry Maidens stone circle in Cornwall and on the beach in Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight. They usually vanished as abruptly as they had appeared a few days after being found, having created a media stir.
