react/review: a responsive journal for art & architecture

Contextualizing Luis Vasquez La Roche’s work through a now-rusting refinery perimetric to his interventions, I argue that reading his performances through an aesthetic of collapse can reframe decay as a productive and promising force. In her review of Brian Meeks’ text on political revolution in the Caribbean, Maziki Thame has suggested, “there is potential in collapse, in hegemonic dissolution, in disorder.” Following Meeks’ recognition of the “implicit potential for a democratic renewal” amid political tumult, Thame suggests that crisis and collapse can herald equitable Caribbean futures rooted in revolutions that impel “radical change, the actual turning of things upside down.” Taking seriously this potential, I propose that an accompanying aesthetic of collapse, defined through Vasquez La Roche’s practice, allows us to embrace the inevitable literal collapses of colonial and capitalist infrastructures and envision through conceptual collapse the potential for post-decay renewal.