carriage
2014
interactive solo durational performance, The Performance Arcade, Wellington New Zealand
A man is visible packing and unpacking empty cardboard boxes in a shipping container temporarily poised above the harbor. He initiates conversation with those who have the curiosity to enter the container. An evolving social dynamic encircles visitors into open-ended explorative relationships, temporarily emptying out and interrogating prevailing flows of cardboard boxes, of material commodities, of shipping containers, through so-called ‘big-box’ retailers, into relations with people’s lives. Visitors are drawn into reflexive states of implicated awareness of the interrelationships between lifestyle and consumption choices, and the largely invisible realm of global cargo. Carriage was presented for 13 hours a day for 5 days, the second work in Douglas’ three-part cycle of annual works for The Performance Arcade.
> > Further information > > CARRIAGE notes, Performance Research ‘On Rupture’, 19:6, 46-53 (pre-published copy)
Photos: Denise Batchelor