Life-affirming strangeness

Maddie Leach -

Curator Jes Fernie describes her Archive of Destruction as "a story-telling platform that brings together narratives around destruction and public art...made up of suspect categories, barely believable tales, and life-affirming strangeness. Spanning a hundred years and many continents, it tells cumulative stories of vulnerability, interference, rage, fear, boredom and love."

Launched in 2021, Jes says it is an ongoing research project "that has no aspiration to be scientific or exhaustive. The selection is the result of conversations, journeys, and research carried out over a ten year period. Like most archives it is subjective, flawed, and a reflection of a particular time and place."

We are happy and honoured that LTH-fontänen and our research project has recently been added to the archive. It finds itself in the company of extraordinary artistic projects including Michael Landy's Breakdown (2001), Gordon Matta-Clark's Window Blow-Out (1976), Rachel Whiteread's House (1993), Robert Smithson's Partially Buried Woodshed (1970), Sam Durant's Scaffold (2017), Lara Almacegui's Demolition of a Wooden House (2011) and Joanna Rajkowska's Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue (2002).

The Fountain: An art-technological-social drama - Archive of Destruction
When LTH-fontänen was launched in 1970, it was heralded as an Fifty years later, it was given the equally bombastic description of the Designed by long-term collaborators and friends, architect Klas Anshelm and artist Arne Jones, the fountain was installed in the grounds of Lunds Tekniska Högskola (…
Archive of Destruction

The fountain Fontänen appears within the category 'Entropy' but can easily be thought about in relation to 'Decay', 'Boredom', 'Love', 'Rage' and Conviction'!