Moving Boxes
29 - 30 September 2006
ANTI Festival, Kuopio - Finland

The empty, inaccessible balcony of Carlson department store seems somewhat at odds with the functional ‘polite modernist’ style the building employs, with its ‘ornamental’ non-functionality. It is this vacant space that I would 'attempt' to fill, both with activity and with cardboards boxes over the period of the ANTI-festival. This process would involve finding sources of disused, empty cardboard boxes in Kuopio. If these boxes, when found, had been flattened they were folded out and taped across the join. Each box was then individually carried across Kuopio to Carlson, where a ladder was climbed in order to place these boxes within the balcony area.

The department store is a development of the covered market, the design style / typology is one that looks to maximise commercial potential of floor / wall area, in this sense this ‘waste’ of space has unused potential. Through the allocation of this space for the storage of cardboard boxes this created usage mirrors the myriad storerooms that will inevitably be found on the inside of the building (perhaps the other side of the balcony wall), yet at the same time the fact that these boxes do not belong to Carlson nor do they contain any goods compounds the futile nature of both the space and the activity. This activity ‘within’ Carlson yet on its exterior has the potential to connect the enclosed ‘Non-Place’ environment of the department store with its immediate outside world.

Walking through the city centre carrying a box, I am at home amongst the pedestrian shoppers with their own boxes and bags, a sideways glance may briefly enquire about the contents of our respective packages. When making multiple trips from the same location, this repeated journey has the potential to become noticed – for instance the person sat eating lunch looking out of a window, is it the third or fourth time I pass the window with a different box that this activity begins to be watched.

Concentrating on the ‘filling in’ and movement of space and time, passing the time of day in an activity with a shifted purpose. By finding an area of space and then moving it, the work attempts to little by little modify the terrain on which these areas and actions are related to each other.

To read my review of the ANTI Festival for RealTime Magazine click here, to download a PDF of the review click here.