Keywords: public art, architectural research, experimental writing, subject-object, ethics.
We are pleased to share Cathryn Klasto's essay, first published in the journal COTAA (Collection of Texts about Architecture) in 2024.
" Some say the LTH Fountain is a disgraced emblem of design, a tragic victim of technological, mathematical and architectural failure and ambition. Others deem it a mysterious work of public art, a devious character that has successfully avoided destruction since its operational failure. Which is true? Both? Neither? What really went wrong to call the truth into question and who is to blame? The Fountain: An art-technological-social drama is a four year funded research project (2021-2025) which has been investigating the network of truths produced by the LTH Fountain. Drawing on the truths uncovered and the ideas generated in the project, this paper, as an experiment in writing, speculates on how the LTH Fountain may have mobilised this blurred context of truth to achieve a particular agenda, namely to reject its origins as an hybrid object of art-architecture in favour of emancipatory subjecthood."
