No Escape Room
November 2022
November 2022
What do we do when our attempts to avoid and run are thwarted by the reality that there is no escape?
No Escape Room was staged in November 2022 as part of a larger, multi-concept project called Trip Insurance, that explored the ways that we look for outs from things that scare us. Visitors who purchased Trip Insurance and filed claims were sent to a harsh and uninterested claims department, where after being forced to wait in line and dismissed, most of their claims would be rejected, and they would be sent to the No Escape Room, while a lucky few were allowed to Escape.
No Escape Room, born equal parts of my love of meditation and irrational disdain of escape rooms, offered visitors an unexpected bait and switch: instead of misery, the collective reality of No Escape offered each person to become part of a grou ritual of sharing in what we each are running from individually, asking whether those burdens, shared, are something worth avoiding, or are in their own, poorly packaged way, a form of medicine.
~300 visitors were sent to the No Escape Room during its ephemeral run.