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Singapore.

international pillow fight day, federation square, Melbourne

international pillow fight day, federation square, Melbourne

State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

A global art phenomenon culminates in a fiery finale at Melbourne Festival, as the subversive and political Santiago Sierra carries out one last act of obliteration to conclude his globetrotting work, DESTROYED WORD.

Since 2010, Sierra’s project has traversed the world, commissioning the construction of giant letters from materials of local importance, and then publicly – and dramatically – destroying them. Having built and torn down structures in Iceland, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, France, Holland, Sweden, India and Papua New Guinea, the project now comes to Melbourne for the destruction of the tenth and final letter.?

In the forecourt of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the last letter of DESTROYED WORD will be constructed and then set aflame. With the burning of this pyre the semantic secret of Sierra’s work will be delivered: together the ten letters spell a word, to be revealed with this final destruction – a unifying theme to tie together this orgy of construction and demolition.

Each dramatic obliteration has been captured on film, and with the burning of the tenth letter, the archival record of the construction and deletion of each DESTROYED WORD will be on exhibit in the National Gallery of Victoria, the individual acts joining to form an immense work that revels in our collective fascination with creation and destruction.