During that time our interests met in investigations on the topic of the private and public space and furthermore the idea of urban squatting and camouflage techniques. While investigating the influence of an anonymously covered body in the public sphere and the effect of different positions on passing people, we came up with the idea to produce a product designated to squatting itself.
As a reference to body-bags, as used by the police, an exposed body lying on open street taking in different positions led to a disturbance in the local urban surroundings.
The bag blocked the outside from the person inside, but was as well hiding the personality of the user, only resembling the shape of a human being. Somehow vulnerable but in that sense very effectively provocative - a sensitive obstacle that was carefully avoided.
What you see in these images is a prototype test version.
The final product nevertheless had to be smart like an accessory and easy to put on, covering the whole corpse like a sleeping bag would. The difference is however that this product keeps the person wearing it in a squatting position and is not made for plain relaxing. Rather, once the user takes in a resting position, limited only to himself in his conscious situation of squatting, he/she instantly turns into an object of passive resistance. In a sitting position the body colour was a greyish beige, fitting in a urban environment, while taking in another position the bag would expose a signal orange, depending on the purpose of the user.
We could imagine uniform rows of bag-people serving as barriers at demonstrations in countries were civil laws still protect the innocent.
David Rych: http://www.parakanal.com/rych/