The aim of interactions designer Nelly Ben Hayoun’s The Other Volcano project was to build a series of semi-domesticated volcanoes that could be housed for several weeks in the living spaces of volunteers. The supranatural volcanoes are large, imposing and extremely inconvenient – erupting dust and gloop in to the living rooms of the volunteers, seemingly at random.
“In order to make myself recognised by the Other, I must risk my own life”, said Sartre. The Other Volcano creates an imagined love-hate relationship, a sleeping giant in the corner of a domestic environment, with the power to provoke excitement and fear in its hosts. It is a project that domesticates the most violent of natural processes, addressing and reinterpreting nature in all its unpredictable glory.
Space In Between presented The Other Volcano on the original carpet taken from Ben Hayoun’s living room, with all the remnants and debris of its unpredictable eruptions. This was shown alongside Home Land: A series of possible experiences - nine newly commissioned drawings.
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