My name is Box. 

I was designed and produced to be a container. 

I have vague noisy memories from when I was born. I was touched ny cold machines, and sometimes by cold hands. They both manipulated me, wrapped me and placed me in different spots.

One day I was laid on a shelf in a Muji store in Madrid’s Fuencarral street. Some time later (don’t know how much, I am a box, I have no concept of time) two female hands picked me and took me somewhere warm, a house, then into a suitcase, then into an office.

And one day those hands picked me up and started to touch me. 

Then my life changed forever.

My name is Alicia. 

I am a Spanish-born architect and designer. 

Next to being a practitioner I am a body, a human body. My body feels, and allows me to connect to other bodies, animate or inanimate. 

I was invited by Adapt-r to meet Box. I decided to spend intimate time with it, and together we investigate the concept of emotional affordance: what does Box afford, what do I afford to Box. 

So next to body, I am also Box. 

And I am (still) designer. This act is a ground to investigate embodied knowledge, and how it can be applicable into design processes. 

BOX ME

Box is body, I am body. 

One hour together, then we depart.

What does this interaction switch on and off, in me as body, me as designer, and me as box?

I have learned - through my practice - that when allowing time and attention to inanimate objects interesting data gets released - which I call emotional information: about my history, my body and how I respond to objects and environment, the body I am connecting to, and the way I practice. They build metaphors as connections with the past, with the present and with impossible futures.

I take this information as research ground, to investigate the concept of emotional affordance.

There are some moments, postures, which spoke louder. Invitations to emotions that this cardboard body affords. Or at least it afforded, to me, during those particular moments.

Laboratory for Emotional Affordance
{LUCA School of Arts, Brussels}

03/2016

This performance is for/as part of ADAPT-r (Architecture Design Art Practice Training research) traveling exhibition. It will be exhibited, next to the proposals by my European co-fellows, during 2016 - in Ghent, Tallin, Glasgow and London. 

Developed under Adapt-r fellowship, in KU Leuven university Faculty of Architecture.