LOT-EK / SPILL from 1 to 29 / may 17 - july 17, 2024
SPILL transforms a 20-foot shipping container into a tactile, human-scaled exploration of form and function, inviting intimate connections between people and object
One 20-foot shipping container is cut into
29 pieces of different sizes and shapes. It is designated ‘out of service’. It
is container number AKLU6022124. It was built in 2006. It is red. Its travel records,
entirely typical of the almost inestimable 5 to 170 million shipping containers
in the world, are mostly unknown. SPILL begins in
response to the elusiveness and opacity of the shipping world. And to its
excess. Our container has been vivisected or dissected – or cut
apart or broken open – to incite pause. Cuts that favor 90-degree
joints of the container (side + roof), with one dimension at 18 inches to
immediately relate to the human body—18” is the height of a seating, a chair, a
bench, as well as a living room table. Create leftovers
that are simply propped up and steadied to be used and occupied. These communal table or
benches are stabilized by a stack of 2x4s, the most common construction
dimensional lumber and yet another generic unit. Intentionally not a ‘designed
leg’, each wood stack is attached to each container piece in one point only, to
rotate to different positions, allowing different geometries and degrees of
stability. Generic, universal, yet playful. All pieces are numbered and
stenciled, red on red. SPILL invites proximity and intimacy. Of people with one another, And between those people, individually or collectively, with the
shipping container as an object: now so very close, so very small, and so very
accessible.