A4 Arts Foundation
Elevator in A4
Cape Town, South Africa
@a4artsfoundation
Sent via email to Andrea Rosen on May 25, 2020: "After much deliberation, we felt that the shopping trolley idea - which involved moving around and engaging in public - represented too high a risk to all involved right now. The virus seems to be taking hold here in SA, case numbers are rising dramatically, and it feels prudent to explore a realisation where the risk is mitigated.
So we took a different approach: We decided to mark the elevator at A4 Arts Foundation as the 'site'. An elevator is a site of physical proximity with strangers. Often silent, sometimes awkward, a liminal, transitory space. During the pandemic, the use of elevators is curtailed: in some cases limited to single users, in other cases taken off-line completely. We recognized that our elevator is well lit when it opens, that it can of course travel between floors and that it would interesting to repurpose this compromised utility as the 'site' for the installation.
For the time being, A4 is closed to public. So the work is in the darkness of the closed elevator until the elevator is called. We will, however, be exploring ways to invite participation. We also kept the cookies in the plastic as a precaution to an infestation that we can't manage remotely. I hope this is acceptable."
