Work

Pedestrian Levitation

Context: commissioned by the cultural department of the Ixelles municipality, Brussels · Year: 2005 · My role: concept, design and execution

A pedestrian crossing of white stickers runs off the pavement, around the corner and splinters up a brick facade.

Research video, 2005. There is also a full nine-minute version.

The question

A pedestrian crossing is one of the strictest signs in the city: it says exactly where you may walk and where you may not. What happens when that sign does not obey its own rules?

What I made

I glued white stickers onto the street and onto a wall in Ixelles: a crossing that ran off the pavement, around the corner, and there broke into shards climbing up the building. No electronics, no explanatory sign. Just a familiar marking in a place it does not belong.

What came of it

One day I watched a young girl trying to walk up the stickers, jumping, in a way so personal and playful that for a moment she became one with the work. The stickers were static; what she did with them was alive. That moment shaped the rest of my practice, and eventually my PhD: I wanted to make interventions that people can appropriate. Where that led is on the research page.

Seen from below, the white sticker shards continue up the facade against a grey sky.

A black-and-white overview of the crossroads: the crossing on the street and the shards climbing the building.