reuben moss /works/TOMORROW
Name Created Description
Parent Directory -
untitled public toilet > sep 10 - Image, Gambia Castle, Auckland, New Zealand
receiver > sep 10 - Image, Gambia Castle, Auckland, New Zealand
transmitter > sep 10 - Image, Gambia Castle, Auckland, New Zealand
untitled public toilet> sep 10 - Image, Gambia Castle, Auckland, New Zealand
untitled public toilet> sep 10 - Image, Gambia Castle, Auckland, New Zealand
the parade of the old new > sep 10 - Audio, First Broadcast from Gambia Castle, Auckland, New Zealand
TOMORROW, September 2010, Gambia Castle, Kanragahape Rd, Auckland New Zealand. Tomorrow was a project consisting
of two distinct parts; the installation of an Exeloo public toilet into the gallery space and the production and
broadcast of a radio documentary entitled "The Parade of the Old New". The documentary tells the story of the
civic centre of Naenae, a large post World War Two state housing community in the Hutt Valley. More specifically it
is the history of the ultimately unsuccessful plans of a Canadian immigrant named William Robertson to establish
the civic centre as a cooperatively controlled retailing and social services hub, and Ernst Plischke the European
Mdernist architect who developed plans for the centre which were never realized. The story is told against the
background of 1930s modern, "progressive" New Zealand society. The work features a soundtrack composed and performed
by Stuart Porter. The broadcast was played in the gallery space on two small transistor radios and reached a range
of about 2 km within central Auckland.
Introduced in New Zealand during the mid 1990s, Exeloo toilets were self cleaning with automatic doors and built-in
muzak, and were -in theory- constructed with extremely resilient material. The toilets were prefabricated to the
dimensions of a crane truck so they could be driven and installed anywhere there was road access. They were a market
response to policy changes towards public space which began in New Zealand during the 1980s and closely followed
"rationalizations" in other spheres of public life.
The Exeloo toilet had just been removed from the Helensville train station out side of Auckland in August 2010
before being installed in the gallery. It had been in place for 15 years and as result of vandalism and misuse
was significantly damaged and no longer operating correctly.
