For ‘Here, at the edge, today’, Beau W Beakhouse and Sadia Pineda Hameed have designed a multi-media installation, creating an immersive prototype technology for association and communion across time. A Medium for All the Moments Outside of Time finds one form for the artists’ three month residency at the British School at Rome researching speculative architecture and social space.

Set in a future in which technology exists for dialogic and collective leisure experiences in ‘communing halls’, the work follows two characters on an interrelated journey through historic arboretums and botanic gardens; to future transport networks and marginal green ecosystems; onboard colonial ships and islands occupied by invasive plant hunters. Language and its potential for slippage, breakdown and revealing contradiction offer the potential for a new medium of interpersonal connection between and beyond these histories.

Inspired by research into conversation pits, radical unrealisable architecture and interior design, this prototype booth creates a space of leisure and relation that encourages a duo relationship, occupying the ghostly bodies of these fictional characters. The booth’s angled design is porous; allowing onlookers but only from a distance, creating an intimate space for the users’ encounter. Beau and Sadia’s past research into the Filipino board game Sungka; redesigning the game in response to the colonial histories of the Philippines to become a space of communication, play and dialogue in ‘rustic futures’; results in a new board incorporated into the booth, augmented by the interrelation of architecture, vertical projection and immersive soundwork.

Thanks to Alice Bucknell, James Clegg, Umulkhayr Mohamed, Peter Mutschler, Shenece Oretha, Ben Orford, Anthony Shapland, Aled Simons and Wingshan Smith.

Curated by Anthony Shapland

Supported by g39, Freelands Foundation, British School at Rome and Arts Council Wales

Images: Dan Weill