”The Impossible War Memorial. Is shooting a cadaver considered a murder?

Text piece written for the project Memorial to Irak War organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London. 23 May - 27 June 2007.

A good question with which to begin a refl ection on the project for a «Memorial to the Iraq War» would be this: why did the Hungarian refugee decide to destroy the original model of Reg Butler’s winning entry to the 1953 competition? The small text accompanying the current project remains very obscure about the incident; the story is told in passing, and it seems that it is only there as a footnote for the important issue, which is the destruction of the original model and the non-realisation of the fi nal monument. Furthermore, and judging from the short description of Butler’s work («… three women overshadowed by an abstract scaffold»), it doesn’t seem to be offensive to sensibilities to the extent that someone should decide to destroy it.