Demolition

From the televised implosion of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis in 1972 to Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2025, demolition is often a spectacle: loud, visually arresting, and violent. It may require heavy machinery like bulldozers and wrecking balls, or pyrotechnics like dynamite. It is the antithesis of care and preservation and is often undertaken with an eye toward speculation or financial gain. It is an act of aggression toward the status quo, a precursor to the tabula rasa and to rebirth, as in the obliteration of the immune system that precedes a bone marrow transplant. This salon explores the histories, politics, and aesthetics of demolition, ranging from Shiva the Destroyer to urban renewal and slum clearance, from the White House’s East Wing to the work of artists like Gordon Matta-Clark, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Kara Walker.

Some of the questions we will ask: When is demolition an act of destruction and when is it an act of creation? Is demolition a sign of society in progress or society in collapse? Of chaos or control? What are the social, historical, and ecological tolls of demolition? Who stands to lose and who stands to gain? Does demolition suggest a societal fetish for the new? Is it a feature or a bug of planned obsolescence? Can demolition and repair co-exist? How is demolition used as an act of historical amnesia and erasure? What can demolition tell us about renewal, revival, and rebirth? What do we do with the rubble and detritus of demolition?

This Salon took place on April 8, 2026.