Fleeting Beauty Inside a Council Flat

Thinking more about the post from yesterday about ArtPadSF's temporary takeover of a hotel, I recalled a phenomenal art installation I saw in London back in 2008. SEIZURE is an Artangel temporary work by Roger Hiorns in which he poured 75,000 liters of Copper Sulfate into an abandoned "council estate flat" or housing project unit as we would say in the States. The result of the sealing up the unit, reinforcing the walls and waiting a few days for the crystalization process is an abandoned apartment where every surface is covered in brilliant blue crystals! You had to where wellies to go inside. Once you're in, you can't help but try to imagine what the previous apartment looked like as you pass from room to room.

Using these abandoned spaces as platform for fleetingly beautiful, contemplative reinterpretations is something we will only see more of as we give ourselves more permission to alter underutilized spaces and create more participatory experiences in public or seized for the public spaces.

Looking at the apartment above through a hole in the ceiling through which the Copper Sulfate was poured.