Have you met Elliot the Cratefan? comment count

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• July 07, 2010 ∥
• By Ingrid Sinclair

Elliot the Cratefan in progress. Photos by Ingrid Sinclair

A massive, bright-red addition to Cape Town’s skyline – built entirely of Coca-Cola crates (and cable ties) – has got everyone talking! We interviewed Porky Hefer, the creative brain behind this installation, to find out more about the eye-catching project which has taken shape at the V&A Waterfront’s harbour.

Porky Hefer is no newcomer to South African’s art and design scene. Hailed as one of the top conceptual thinkers in our country, Porky is an ad man turned creative guru who has paid his dues at agencies but went independent in 2007, starting up his highly respected Animal Farm collective.

His latest in-your-face publicity act is Elliot the Cratefan, a project three years in the making. You may or may not have spotted Elliot – a structure made out of one-and-a-half- and two-litre Coca-Cola crates – on the harbour at the V&A Waterfront as he perches, bright red and unbelievably massive, against the backdrop of Table Mountain.

Elliot is a welcome if surprising addition to Cape Town’s skyline. We certainly did a double take when we first spotted him at the Waterfront last Saturday.

So what inspired Porky’s latest project? “Lego,” he says, on the phone and on-site during yesterday’s finishing touches. “It’s about building up and breaking down existing systems; like a child who builds a boat out of Lego, plays with the boat, breaks it down and then builds a spaceship and plays with that. It’s about how we can continually make new things from existing materials, and then break it down, start again and make different forms.”

This particular vision involves creating something beautiful out of packaging materials, usually considered waste products. “Everything will again be broken down and the crates will go back into the system.
We are looking at a similar project for the 2012 Olympics in London, using the nearest Coca-Cola crate facility … So nothing will travel far, and therefore no transport-related by-products will be created.”

This kind of thinking is in line with green, sustainable design. And, as Porky points out, “It’s actually the way people build in rural areas; they use what’s close by.”

Porky and his team, which includes members of Jo’burg-based art management company Art at Work and 14 members of SGB-Cape (a scaffolding company), used approximately 4 200 Coca-Cola crates to create the 18-metre-tall Cratefan and they’ve been working from 08h00 to 22h00 for the past month to get it done. Yesterday was spent cleaning up and adding the finishing touches to the Cratefan, which will stick around for at least a year.

But how are the crates stuck together? “Cable ties – a lot of cable ties,” Porky chuckles.

While you may assume that it’s all in the name of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, Porky says it’s actually more about maintaining the momentum and excitement that has been created by this sporting event. “The world won’t end when the influx of tourists ends; our lives must continue!”

Then it must be a great piece of free publicity for Coca-Cola? “No, Coca-Cola paid for this installation, even though it was unsolicited work. I worked with them in 2007 so I went in knowing their strategies. I find it so challenging: no company really likes something that was created outside of their area of brand control. The real difficulty with projects like these is persisting. I gave up four times during the course of this project!”

But the persistence has paid off and resulted in positive buzz for an initiative that demonstrates the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra. “Coca-Cola has such a bad reputation eco-wise, but most of the people who are writing about this project are coming from the eco-journalism side, and so far I’ve only picked up one negative comment. A project like this stretches the imagination, and we’ve now entered a space where nothing is impossible.”

So come expand your mind, take time to enjoy Cape Town’s shifting cityscape and get carried away by some inspired crate creations.

Read more about Elliot the Cratefan on the Animal Farm blog.