A half-melted pen found at a laundromat in Avondale, West Auckland where Janet Lilo lives, inspired this more epically-scaled sculpture. The work asks us to consider everyday communication in the digital world which is characterised by the collapse of time, distance, and space. In response, the pen is an ode to our physical selves and the shifts we’ve made to stay connected to one another. As a symbol of tiny histories, this pen has an incredible story, one that remembers the shopping lists, big ideas, important phone numbers and the most heartfelt letters that melted lovers. Lilo’s practice has played with the ways we communicate for some years. Past projects have taken social media formats and rendered them analogue, her work employing polaroid and other printed photos on a mass scale; a translation of the data and images that float around us into something more tangible. Her work is not intended as a critique of the digital world, rather Lilo highlights how public space is accessed and mediated through personal observations, experiences, and different tools; whether these are film cameras, smartphones, or pens. Her installations are often laced with humour and a knowing nod towards popular culture. Pen’s location on the roof of what used to be Christchurch Boys High School evokes the memories of adolescent experiments with flames and stationery, as well as words inscribed into desks in moments of youthful folly. Further inside the Arts Centre, whole rafters are covered with the names and dates of students and actors in the former Court Theatre. These spontaneously inked gestures now provide an archive of interpersonal activity overlooked by more formal records thanks to the humble biro. In homage to this iconic instrument and its many deeds, the original half-melted pen found by Lilo, occupies a special spot in Canterbury Museum for the duration of SCAPE.