MONITOR
MONITOR is an inhabitable nomadic sculpture that navigates land, water and ice. The ambitious work builds upon artist James Capper’s practice of building unique operational sculptures and expands it, through a and architect Greg Storrar, into the field of architecture, whilst applying innovative research in cutting edge robotic fabrication technologies.
The 8-meter-long mobile studio learns from lizard locomotion and comprises four hydraulically actuating legs and a hinged torso to enable it to navigate different terrains. It will house resident artists on expeditions into unfamiliar territories, aiming to explore, observe, and broadcast in times of increasingly wavering truth. Like an architectural Swiss-army knife, its thick wall are designed to contain a tight nesting of domestic and artistic functions needed for its artistic expeditions.
MONITOR was first conceived by Capper, Pearce and Storrar in 2018 for the residency program of the Kyiv-based IZOLYATSIA platform for cultural initiatives. Since being driven out of a former insulation factory in Donetsk by Russian-backed militias during the first Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, the gallery has been in exile, and is now a nomad, always on the move. It has found a temporary home in a warehouse building on the shipyard of Kyiv’s harbour. This harbour is to be the base station for MONITOR, from where it can voyage up of the Ukraine in February 2022, Izolyatsia is directing all activities towards responding to immediate war-related population needs in Ukraine.
The project was only implemented as a prototype, focusing in particular on MONITOR INCREMENTAL WALL, the first scale 1:1 version for the work. The prototype, formed of two panelled skins fabricated using robotic incremental sheet forming, is formed by the objects its stows as well as by the imprints of bodies inhabiting the studio. The sculptural piece develops as a conversation between the two skins, between the artistic and the domestic and is marked by transformations, mistranslations and echoes passing through the wall.
- Original location: Kyiv, Ukraine / London, UK
- Space needed: 15.0 m2
- Capacity: 6
- Original author: James Capper, Thomas Pearce, and Greg Storrar
