A while ago now I installed a library shelf and a whiteboard for library requests in my block of flats. People liked it, had fun with it. Books were borrowed and the shelf replenished. As is so often the case with stuff like this though of course someone eventually ripped it down.
So a little about lifts. Lifts are just weird, right? We all feel fidgety in them, we feel exposed, we feel a bit nervous.
But they’re also more than that. At an art-wank conceptual level lifts are these odd and totally unique interstitial environments that are both a transfer from one state to another (home/work/street/bus/car) and a Schrödinger’s cat box of weird suspension; a little bit of Limbo.
The lending lift played with that idea. By adding inherently social objects into the lift (second hand books) you could encourage both play and a sense that we were all in the lift together, even if we were alone when in it.
My girlfriend bought me a whistle locator for my keys a while ago (I really am terrible with my keys) but it was being set off by music and, well, lots of stuff at home. We were in the lift and at *exactly* the same moment Ela and I said “Let’s put it in the lift!”.
Now whether this was a by-product of the changed way we felt about the lift since the lending library or a delicious brain synchrony, I immediately realised it was a fun thing to do to socialise the space again, and interesting from a social object position too. So I immediately ordered ten more. Of course.
When we’re alone and we sing or we whistle, we are arguably happy, or at least likely not maudlin. When you’re alone in a lift and preparing to exit this interstitial realm, you very well might have a little whistle. In our lift at least, if you do, the lift will now join you in chorus. It’s like they want to play too.
This is all a bit of silliness of course, and not to be taken seriously. Obviously.