Cutting up a work of art, under normal circumstances, is to destroy it. But these were not normal circumstances. On 23 June 2016, while we were installing The Ethics of Dust in Westminster Hall, the citizens of the United Kingdom were voting on whether or not to leave the European Union. I woke up at dawn the next morning and walked towards Parliament to put the finishing touches on the installation. I passed a poster plastered on a telephone booth with the image of Churchill and a caption that read 'Britons don't quit'. When I arrived in Westminster Hall I looked down at the plaque that says 'Winston Churchill lay in state here'. Sally, a member of our production crew, was already there, working patiently. Behind her, the hall was getting packed with politicians and their aides trying to make sense of what had just happened. Journalists started pouring in as well, and some politicians began hiding behind The Ethics of Dust to make frantic phone calls and avoid the journalists. The public began amassing outside, and we could hear them chanting indistinct slogans.
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