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The project began to take shape through a series of coffee dates and debates at Mt Cook Café. We were looking to project ‘escapism’ into the public sphere and bring about notions of imagination and fantasy.
Through observation of people on their lunch breaks at our first sight on Lampton Quay, we noticed how reading was used to relax and escape the hustle and bustle of the surroundings. Through this identification of the written word as a vehicle in which one could escape their environment we subsequently focused in on the book as a visual metaphor for ‘escapism’.
In addition with the creation of the book we looked into roles in which interaction could play in further expressing ‘escapism’ and enhancing the visual impact of the installation. After much deliberation and trialing of different ideas and forms, we came up with a series of symbols of ‘flight’. Birds, planes and rockets were cut out as canvas’s in which the public were invited to paint and write messages on.
These creations of imagination were then anchored to strings exploding out of the books pages. This dually represented both the different tangents in which imagination can take within the mind but also the journeys it can take us on as individuals. The installation was made complete by the publics’ creativity and participation and acted as a unified emblem of imagination and more broadly ‘escapism’.
We would just like to thank all those who helped us in the completion of this project. Thank you to the team from Massey University for organising the project and helping with the development and construction of the book. Thank you to the public for participating in the installation- it would not have been successful without your help.
Thank you to all the sponsors, Interislander, Mitre 10, New World, Bunnings Warehouse, Resene, and Gordon Harris, without your contributions the book could never have been made.