Soft Landings Showroom is an installation consisting of three product-testing devices, trialing the promised parameters of 200 heavy-duty transport cases over the course of 2 weeks, in the exhibition space of Neverneverland (Amsterdam, NL).
An artist initiative by Eurico Sá Fernandes, Alban Karsten, Kitty Maria and Tom Kemp, Soft Landings appraises the industrialized speculation on unfortunate events and disaster: the corporate tendency to favor the worst case scenario –from a scratch or a burn to (extraterrestrial) attacks and solar flares – and come with solutions for disaster preparedness.
For the Soft Landings Showroom, 200 white, heavy-duty transport cases were commissioned from a factory in Ningbo, China. These cases purport to be future proof, totally resistant to water, dust, shock and impact. They will live for a far longer life than any visitors to the Showroom. For this reason, they took their rightful place as the protagonist in an examination of a fully materialized aspect of industrial speculation: the product testing phase.
The boxes were exhibited in an expanded view of industrial testing cycles, incorporating handmade wind, impact and water testing machines, speculative roleplay and algorithmic supposition.
Through their exhibitions and sales-events, Soft Landings examines the one-man assembly line, alternative gift economies and the semiotic gaps of product designing through Alibaba.
