(fotomontagem - joão toscano)

Kiosk 2008 is an installation about the construction and evolution of character of urban spaces as a result of an association of multiple features. It is inspired in an iconic image of London, the British public telephone kiosk - the Red Telephone Box - which will probably lose its purpose in the near future due to recent massive changes in communication habits and devices.

The Red Telephone Box is a strong urban reference since it was created as a result of a competition in 1924. It has had eight versions - K1 to K8 – since then, although the characteristic features remain the same. The public telephone kiosk is also an iconic image all around the world since Clark Kent started changing into Superman inside one. The public telephone kiosk protects the callers using the wired telephone, which is being replaced by wireless communication. Kiosk 2008 inverts this by placing the air inside, proposing a representation of identifiable landscapes – Sea, Desert, Forest and Lavender Fields.

The installation is a three minute experience of sight, hearing, smell and touch with an arbitrary selection of atmosphere. The object itself has a pop and comic book - like image, suggesting the Red Telephone Box in a subtle way. The experience inside the kiosk is a synthesis of sensorial aspects of the four atmospheres, stimulating the visitor senses with distant landscapes features. The decomposition of the multiple aspects of landscape is also a challenging – though extremely difficult to achieve - analytical exercise. Kiosk 2008 is about our perception of the world and the correlations we establish. The contribution of an urban characteristical element - such as the Red Telephone Box - to the character of a city is parallel to the importance of natural phenomena to the identification of a landscape.