Site specific project

This site specific installation was placed on the exterior staircases of the building by Rosebery Avenue at number 20-24 in central London, EC1. The building used to be a printing company from 1877 till early 20th century. Later on part of the building was used as offices by an architectural company. In 2006, the landlord decided to renovate it but the architectural plans were never realized as he went bankrupted and the building is abandoned since then. The exterior staircases are the only part of the building which still have the same use and structure as many people use them to go from Warner Street to Rosebery Avenue and vice versa.

Inspired from the history of the building and more specifically the staircases themselves, we constructed fake additional staircases made out of cardboard so as to create an illusive, Escher inspired, exaggeration of the real staircases. In order to emphasize on the fact that the building was a printing company, we decided to use the most common sentence in the printing process, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The actual site specific project was consisted of the fake staircases, four live performers and sound. The performers were silent and were doing non-complex rigid movements. They were identical looking so as to emphasize on the illusive element. They were all dressed in black (top, trousers and shoes) and they were all sharing the same hairstyle.

The sound was relevant to the aspects of the history of the building such as typewriter, printing machines and footsteps. The performers were carrying small devices that were reproducing those sounds and whenever the audience was passing by them, they could hear them.

This project was a collaboration of five students of (in alphabetical order):
Nicole Hoesli
Maria Kelesidi
Lydia Kontogiorgi
ShunYo Mo
Mariza Pagkaki