Ruins is an anthology in the series Documents of Contemporary Art, edited and with a 5,000-word introductory essay by Dillon. The original claim made here concerns the future orientation of the ruin, and contemporary artists’ deployment of it as a speculative rather than retrospective or melancholy form. It collects writings on ruin from contemporary artists, critics, philosophers, novelists and other historical sources, and demonstrates for the first time in such depth the extent of historical interest in ruins in the art of recent decades. Artists and writers include: Walter Benjamin, Robert Smithson, J. G. Ballard, Paul Virilio, Tacita Dean, Gerard Byrne, Chris Marker, Jane & Louise Wilson and the Otolith Group. The originality of the selection lies partly in the inclusion of literary and philosophical examples that expand from a more familiar canon: texts by Derrida, Bataille, Calvino and Geoff Dyer.
The book was favourably reviewed in Art Monthly (No. 352, 2011-12), and a revised version of its introduction, tracing the artistic and literary interest in ruins – from Diderot through Rose Macaulay to Dean and the Wilsons – was published in the Guardian Review (‘Ruin lust: our love affair with decaying buildings’, 2012). Dillon was also invited to speak on his research into modern ruins and contemporary art at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2011), the Hayward Gallery (2012), the University of Southampton (2011), the Van Eyck Academy (2010) and elsewhere.