Heather Phillipson

The party is over, or maybe the entire countercultural dream has finally run its course, leaving only the hum of feedback. Heather Phillipson imagines a situation that might have been a memorial or a funeral wake. The temporary autonomous zone of the squat party has collapsed into its own morbid and entropic aftermath.

The space is littered with party decorations and drying flowers in makeshift vases. The sound system has not yet been disassembled, a faded VJ memorial tribute is still running, and an oversized loaf of bread is propped up on sawhorses like a coffin. Placing this wreckage in a room defined by delusions of grandeur—under a chandelier hanging from a too-low ceiling—Phillipson points to a double abandonment: not just the extinction of underground rebellion, but the deprioritization of public culture at large, which is left to die as a useless luxury in a society that no longer values its own collective making.

Heather Phillipson (1978, London, United Kingdom) is a poet and artist whose work includes video, installation, and sculptural environments, as well as music, text, and performance. Her immersive installations frequently evoke a sense of threat, suggesting that established systems and ideas are on the brink of collapse. Phillipson was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2022, and her sculpture THE END was selected for the Fourth Plinth commission on Trafalgar Square (2020–22). Her works have been exhibited internationally in numerous museums and at biennials. Phillipson lives in London.