Dec 1, 2026
LOT-EK lectures at RIT Vignelli Center, Rochester
concept & vision
SPILL begins in response to the elusiveness and opacity of the shipping world. And to its excess. Our container has been vivisected or dissected – or cut apart or broken open – to incite pause. Its fragments are literally spilled: to welcome, to allow wondering, seating, connections and conversations, around them and in close proximity, as this completely mysterious object is now fully exposed to all
design & architecture
a 20-foot container is cut into 29 pieces of different sizes and shapes. It is designated ‘out of service’. It is container number AKLU6022124. It was built in 2006. It is red. Its travel records, entirely typical of the almost inestimable 5 to 170 million shipping containers in the world, are mostly unknown. We know that over the past two years it has been in China, Singapore, Korea, Myanmar, and between those places, in international waters, on the lawless sea
program & use
Cuts that favor the 90-degree moments of the containers create leftovers that are simply propped up and steadied to be used and occupied. The entirety of the container is utilized—a moment of awareness and recognition; and celebrated—the ingenuity of the object and system, its essential simplicity in endless transformation. A set of projections, also mined from existing imagery, displays and uncovers the relentless repetition of container ports along the shorelines of our planet. With their fantastic geometries and geographies. With their violence to the richest ecology on Earth, found always at the threshold of ground and water
impact & significance
SPILL invites proximity and intimacy. Of people with one another, And between those people, individually or collectively, with the shipping container as an object: now so very close to our bodies, so very small, and so very accessible. SPILL is a pause, SPILL is a SPELL. We notice. We celebrate. We ruminate. We are surprised, shipwrecked, joyful, outbound, abroad, aboard, overboard, at sea, off course, and on alert
