You can listen to Jes’ lecture at the Fountains Failures Futures: The afterlives of public art symposium in Lund (Sept 2023) here.
Jes argues that the destruction of public artworks is often viewed as a shameful display of failure. She explores how we could rethink this response and embrace the idea of destruction as a potentially transformative, expansive, cathartic act which revels in unruly, unknowable live contexts, and offers opportunities for the accrual of new narratives. Drawing on examples of artworks in the online Archive of Destruction, Jes highlights public artworks by Nicole Eisenman, Amina Menia, and 3Nós3.