A Carrying Vessel

In 2022 the Associated Designers of Canada asked Carmen Alatorre and Wladimiro A. Woyno R. to design and curate the Canadian professional exhibit. They began from the buildings Canada put up for its regional theatres and universities in the 1970s and 80s, often in the brutalist style of the time, and from the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in particular. The vessel is such a building as a contemporary ruin: a designer’s studio from the 70s, abandoned and left to the elements.

It was not to be a loop. A visitor who turned on the light switch, pushed a button, opened the trashcan or the medicine cabinet, moved the arm of the drafting table or stepped on a certain floor tile set off one of the featured artists’ interventions, thirty seconds to a minute long: a piece of sound, an excerpt projected on the wall, a change of light and a narration.

Shipping a container from Vancouver would have cost over $80,000, so nothing was built at home. A shop in Prague made the walls; the team brought the sensors, lights, projectors and the computer that ran the installation, and built the rest on site in the three days before the festival opened.