Developed and produced in 2000 as a two-person show at ‘Platform’ in Melbourne, Australia, No Harmful Side-Effects sees KIT and Rachel Chapman produce two separate pieces of work related to similar concerns. ‘Platform’ resides in the Flinders Lane Train Station in Melbourne and consists of 20 large-scale vitrines, 10 on each side of the walkway / underpass. Examining the notion of the by-pass and the by-product and thus using materials which may be considered to be side-effects of a certain process or object, KIT produce a project for one side of the underpass and Chapman the other.

By-products expose narratives of the product, which cannot be controlled. This lack of control cannot be negated or else it would be. Neither is it embraced since complicity with the uncontrollable would lead to a perceived state of 'vulnerability', and thus a concession to the power of the chaotic. This conflict constructs a precarious equilibrium in understanding the product and the by-product and it’s within this ambiguity of function and the uncontainable that the projects existed.

KIT work with two materials. The first used is lint, a by-product of the somatic and the cleaning industries. Lint is a collection of fibres, hair, skin and dust caught in washing machines filters. Bags of it are thrown away each week by laundrettes. This was used as the reference to the body.

The second material is the airbag, which can be considered to be a by-product of the travel industry and the narratives of speed and control. The accident is the inevitable inbuilt by-product of these narratives and renders the airbag as a telling symbol of chaos and stasis within the networks of velocity. This was used as a reference to motion.

KIT collected 20 bags full of lint and covered the whole surface area of the vitrines interiors with it. The airbags had igloo’s sewn into them via a computer controlled sewing machine and were stretched across the vitrines interiors with seat belts which were attached to the sides of the bags. Together the two by-products intimated the proposition of the body in motion and voiced a site-specific conversation with the architecture given that the works existed in a railway stations by-pass.

A photographic work with the same title is also used in a bookwork for a group show at the MAMA gallery in Rotterdam, Holland in 2001 and deals with similar concerns of the by-product conversations caused by the body in motion.

No Harmful Side-Effects exhibits at the following galleries -

2001   MAMA Gallery (Rotterdam, Holland)
2000   Platform (Melbourne, Australia)