Esplanade and Test Shack #13

During our visit to Esplanade, we passed through an avenue of trees where Florence our guide explained was a space where homeless people are known to take refuge for the night. This space interested me since my work explores the notion of homelessness and mobile shelters.  I intend to build a mobile home from cardboard and place it within the avenue of trees for a night.

The notion cardboard as commodity in a South African context; street-surfers, improvised living structures, and the politics of aestheticising poverty. Bought cardboard vs. found/recycled cardboard. Here the materiality of the structures becomes important –impermanent, highly susceptible to weathering, but fluid, adaptable and mobile.

Examining the process of gentrification and the artist’s intervention – the act of inserting structures (or artworks) into a space in order to manifest or articulate place – and using play/performance/action/interaction to explore and engage the complex patterns that arise.  Supervision of the structure (or artwork) vs. Abandonment of the structure (or artwork); how this changes the way it is utilised.

I am interested to see how this work translates in Strasbourg as an intervention, as my pervious ‘shacks’ have only been erected in South Africa.

Test Shack #12, Cape Town South Africa. ‘A Note to a Stranger’ 2013, curatored by Kabelo Malatsie.