In his article, Diminishment, I: Architecture and the Shelter-Rubble-Dust Continuum published on e-flux in 2025, Achille Mbembe writes: ‘The age of brutalism is akin to the age of rubble and dust. We are surrounded by countless cities of rubble and dust: Grozny, Homs, Aleppo, Gaza... In these hallucinatory times, architecture is about rebuilding lives. It is about the restoration of livelihoods and the provision of shelter for those who, having lost everything and, having been left homeless, “can be at home only in their bodies.”’

Stone, Virus, Rubble presents close-up shots of the British flag hoisted above the British Museum colonnaded façade, paired with a declaration of technical insurgency against the institution. This coupling exposes the museum’s complicity in sustaining the colonial violence of the British state and the ongoing rubblisation of Palestinian bodies in Gaza. The same photogrammetric technologies used as part of the museum’s strategy exhibition display are integrated within the automated targeting systems of Zionist missiles directed towards Palestinian bodies. Stone colonnade, national flag, and rubble are violently and necessarily intertwined.