Slow Transit
2015
Oslo National Academy of The Arts
Oslo,  Norway
 

“Slow Transit” was a performative installation presented at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2015. It took place as part of the PUBspa workshop and involved placing a rubber boat inside a revolving door. The boat was surrounded by wire sketches forming fragmented outlines of human bodies and everyday objects. Emergency aluminum blankets were spread on the ground to create sound and draw attention as people walked through the space. The setting immediately disrupted the normal rhythm of movement, turning an ordinary entrance into a space of reflection and confrontation.
 

The installation used the revolving door as both a symbolic and physical boundary. The door, usually a point of smooth transition, became slowed, obstructed, or, at some point, stuck by the presence of the rubber boat. Viewers and passersby had to interact with or navigate around it, experiencing a friction of movement that reflects the struggles of migration. The wire drawings added a sense of fragility and instability to human life in transit. Through this disruption, the work made the act of moving from one place to another both visible and uneasy.
 

This intervention was about more than its physical form. It questioned how art can exist within daily life without being confined to a gallery or a “white cube.” By choosing a public and functional space, the artist engaged directly with reality, interrupting the flow of ordinary activities and forcing the environment itself to respond. The revolving door became both a stage and a participant, showing how site-specific art can transform familiar spaces into spaces of awareness.
 

At the heart of the work lies a reflection on the East African boat refugee crisis across the Mediterranean Sea, particularly from 2009 to the present. The rubber boat directly references the media and public consciousness surrounding the dangerous journeys many people undertake in search of safety. Yet within the calm, ordered space of an art academy, it appeared strangely out of place; both present and invisible, echoing how the issue itself is constantly seen in the news but rarely encountered in daily life.
 

Slow Transit combined performance and installation to make viewers confront their own participation in systems of movement, privilege, and visibility. By situating a symbol of migration in a place of passage, the work transformed the simple act of walking through a door into a moment of reflection on the risky migration of our time.