Pause Platform

Filed under Ongoing Event, Installation, projects

Artist: Caroline Woolard
Website: http://carolinewoolard.blogspot.com

The Have a Seat project from 2006 will be updated and intensified. Expect Pause Platforms with room for true stops on the street: for conversation, exclamation, and shared secrets.

Formerly called Have a Seat, this guerrilla intervention attaches seats to stop sign posts to create Pause Platforms. The new name calls attention to the radical act of stasis in spaces designed for other means: shopping or moving. Robert Musil reminds his readers, “Stopping to think is dangerous.” Alternative stasis reorients bodies and thoughts on the street, literally changing a point of view (lowering it). Using the body itself and objects that incite participation, this project rejects monotonous routine, exploring transitional spaces and expanding a collective imagination focused on overlooked spaces of potential.

The Pause Platforms will do more than carry the weight of pedestrian contemplation; these public seats will leave extra room for individual thoughts and secrets, the specific history of one location in Williamsburg. If Have a Seat filled a space of rest long vacated by public benches, Pause Platforms do this while celebrating the spontaneous potential of time spent thinking, looking, and leaving traces behind. In response to the collection of stickers and graffiti art, the new seats ask for notes, objects, and conversations: expect drawers, chalk boards, and loveseats.