Turborama

System T explores the materiality of invisible spaces, the interstices of our dwellings. Polypropylene plastic sleeves are mainly used to protect cables from the electronics they house. This cheap, recyclable material is shock and weather-resistant, and found almost everywhere in the world. It proliferates in what we might call the “the Undercommons”* – between the walls and partitions of houses, under floors and city sidewalks, in subway tunnels, between earth and concrete, sand and tar. Its shape and mechanical properties were a starting point; the sleeves were decomposed and reassembled by hand using a bead-weaving technique. This process of slow, artisanal implementation attempts to invert the logic of growth, to linger on the present to reorganise and reconfigure it. This narration of space, like a transformation of the built environment, renews and preserves what exists while considering the possibilities of material resistance. The updated technique requires no machinery, only a few low-tech tools depending on the demands of the project at hand. Infinite variations of colour patterns, formats and densities spring forth, tailor-made and composed with the déjà-la – what’s already there.

System T suggests an alternative to the consumption of materials and industrial standardisation, opening up the possibility of multiple personal appropriations. By revealing the layers and structures within homes, the project interrogates the devices that separate the private from the exterior and the hidden from the visible, echoing what makes up our own privacy needs.

From this research emerged Turborama, a partition that unfolds like a curtain, functional indoors and outdoors (if used to separate spaces or as a filtering screen). The change in scale inherent in replacing beads with construction material allows for projection from a bodily level and jewellery-making to an architectural one.

*“The Undercommons” is a term borrowed from Stephano Harney and Fred Moten’s 2022 book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study.