State-Of-The-Art Line Marking by J. Hellman

State-Of-The-Art Line Marking by J. Hellman
Sisis International Magazine, Issue 13, 1998, England

KIT is an internationally known collaboration of artists who originally come from the South Manchester area. Since 1990 they have exhibited in Canada, USA, Germany, Holland and the UK. Their most recent project was part of an exhibition called EPILOGUE, coordinated in response to the imminent demolition of the Saints Peter and Paul High School in Widnes, Cheshire. The demolition was to take place shortly after the exhibition and a private housing estate was to be built in its place.

The school was originally constructed in 1952 with the local community paying a small contribution from their wage packets each week to buy the bricks. Since then the school has continually moved in and out to the different boroughs. The KIT Homes project was initiated by asking a number of the children who attended the school to draw plans of what they considered to be ideal living spaces with no restriction on size, material etc. as they were to design their idea of Utopia.

Ownership and control of space has been articulated through mapping and naming for centuries and is constantly re-articulated through actions as disparate as the chalk men drawn on hillsides, the making of maps and the tagging of graffiti. The plans were then to be taken and drawn on to the football pitches which surrounded the school, with a line marker. Aerial photos were taken of the site and installed within the school as part of the larger exhibition. KIT transformed a school office into a "housing sales office" mimicking those of the construction companies whose rows of houses were fast advancing toward the school.

The fictional blueprints of KIT Homes, drawn on the ground, referenced all these histories and a projected future for the space when it will only exist in memories and a souvenir postcard of the aerial photograph.