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In a defined space of 60 × 60 × 120 cm, a person waits while the city walks past: a street performance about refugees held in detention camps.

The space is closed, an inside and an outside. On 27 July 2018 a person stayed in it in central Athens from 11:17:34 to 15:49:13. The only way to reach anyone was a note: an Arduino and a thermal printer pushed a message for help out through a slot.

By then refugees had left the news and the streets of daily life, but the camps were still full. The piece asks how long a person can last in a small, repetitive space with almost no way to ask for help, and how passers-by respond. Made as an activist act within the ALIEN (Advanced Learning and Inclusive EnviroNment) project.

Credits

  • Performance & Coding – Athanasios Katsougiannis

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60cm x 60cm x 120cm

  • Performer hidden inside a cardboard box standing in a covered market among vendors
  • Close-up of legs beneath the cardboard box, titled "The trapped victim"
  • Arduino board, wires and ultrasonic sensor on a thermal printer, titled "The transmission medium"
  • Printed help note emerging from a slot in the cardboard box, titled "The message for help"
  • Crowd of passers-by flowing around the cardboard box performer on a busy Athens pedestrian street
  • Passer-by reading a message printed by the boxed performer in a busy Athens square
  • Woman reading the printed plea from the cardboard box in a square before a neoclassical parliament building
  • 60cm x 60cm x 120cm performer in a cardboard box on a city pavement beside traffic and a motorbike