Elevators is a full collaboration with Nick Penny and originated from the observation of everyday common spaces and conversations about their significance in relation to communication. One of these spaces that serve as intersections where strangers coincide in their daily routine are elevators. Theoretically this confined space presents opportunities for communication, but under normal circumstances hardly any meeting results in extroverted behavior. The idea of the elevator became a subject of research and so we discovered the elevator paradox:
elevators can seem to be mostly going in one direction, as if they were being manufactured in the middle of the building and being disassembled on the roof and basement.(Marvin Stern and George Gamow)
This led us to think about the perception of time within elevators and how this experience relates to the design of the space itself. Incorporating ideas about the transgression of physics in video games and film fiction we decided that these machines would be a great subject of study.
The result is an attempt to disrupt a space and create an alternate reality that, through juxtaposition, establishes the actual character of that space. By taking initially separate time structures with separate rhythms and variables and reducing them to one linear event in video format, we are able to create a portal that connects two different realities and presents us with the opportunity to observe the coincidences happening between them.
Our performance is a reversal of common space and its perception, a representation of the possibility of parallel dimensions in time. Nick and me are travelers in this journey through time and yet remain the only other constant alongside the elevators with the potential elevator visitors effecting all variations that happen around us.
