I headed down into the arches.
Having donned my anti-Swine Flu surgical mask, and swept through the black curtains into a dimly lit room with the familiar, almost welcoming, ominous drones that tell you that you have crossed the portal into a Punchdrunk world, I was face to face with, no doubt about it, a sculpture, a very fine piece as it happens by Luke Montgomery called Heaven on Earth, an altar form perhaps, or a Neolithic slab for human sacrifices, winged by wire, backlit, with something spooky, like umbilical chord preserved in formaldehyde at its heart.
So I was in a kind of sculpture park, albeit the dark, evil twin of YPS and Cass. This was post-apocalyptic world and I was witnessing either the death of advanced capitalism or its ultimate success. The fat controller was seen being pleasured by a lapdancer in the ladies toilet (seen through slats in the door before they were slammed shut), and appeared as a mannequin overseeing the workers toiling below. And what toil. Running on a giant hamster wheel to generate electricity, or endlessly pushing trolleys along a bleak, and really long railway track.
The workers were dressed in identical uniforms, and moved lifelessly. They collapsed on the ground, and would then twitch into life as though being charged up by electricity. There was a touch of the Planet of the Ouds from Doctor Who.
Up above us, a row of books would collapse like dominos, triggering a system of swinging barrels and cogs and pulleys which in turn released a silver ball which ran along a track before dropping into a bucket near the giant wheel. The ball would be polished and replaced and then the whole thing would crank up again.
I found a room where, on knocking, a door was opened by a pale, thin, Victorian butler who told me “he’s not here. He’s gone to see Yoshuwaaaah” over and over again. By “he” did he mean the fat controller?
But the workers were few in number. What happened to the rest of humanity. Evidence seemed scattered about. Patches of grass marked by stones suggested graves. There was video of humans living in pods, a la alien, enslaved or waiting for salvation. The last few survivors of what? War, disease, or political enslavement?
Much of the art followed a cyberpunk/steampunk theme, with touches of Alien and Doctor Who thrown in. Vessels glowing with lights. A sinister dentist chair turned into a mechanical killing machine . A body was slumped over a table. Tiny shrunken buildings were dotted about the place.
So what exactly was going on here?
This was a collaboration between Punchdrunk, the Old and New Vics and various invited artists. The intention was to combine art and theatre, and give it a sinister, uniquely Punchdrunk theme. What I liked most about the art was how tonally consistent it was, so that you could at least start to patch together a sense of some narrative from these fragment. But it was difficult to really get so excited about the art pieces in the same way as I did say with Lynn Chadwick’s piece up at Cass, or the St Ives Room at Pallant House. And there was a kind of familiarity with much of it, as though the makers had seen a lot of what I have seen over recent years, from the spectral multi-artist show at Belsay a few years back to the weirder outreaches of Mimefest (various mad Russians at the ICA.)
I liked the Punchdrunk element, especially the workers. There was something of Gormley about them, like living sculptures. And if the purpose of the exercise was to explore how art and theatre can work together, then this suggested that the route through is to to do just that, not to have the artwork as a backdrop, set dressing, but an equal, kinetic part of the proceedings.
If much of the art did not or was not allowed to stand out on its own, it certainly contributed to the atmosphere and other worldy feel of the event. But I missed some kind of dramatic impetus, a sense of things building up.
On the way out, I was given a very good brochure about the event. I’m not sure if it would have been helpful to have known more before I went in.
Being in Chichester, I missed the whole London Paper controversy. Apparently there was a big feature in the LP, explaining what was what, and as a result the rest of the 15,000 tickets sold out in a couple of hours. Foul, cried the Guardian. London Paper readers do not deserve to go to Punchdrunk events, ranted the Guardian (now do you believe me about how awful the leftwing media is?!). It might return in the Autumn, as with all Punchdrunk stuff, it’s worth a second viewing. But in the meantime, the Punchdrunk team move to Manchester and I can’t wait.
PS apparently Metropolis was a big part of the inspiration for the event; not a film I’ve seen somehow, but a quick google talks of a “vision of a horrific future with a favoured elite living on the surface of the earth enjoying a life of luxury, and a vast army of nameless workers living in a grim underground city toiling ten hour shifts”.
Having donned my anti-Swine Flu surgical mask, and swept through the black curtains into a dimly lit room with the familiar, almost welcoming, ominous drones that tell you that you have crossed the portal into a Punchdrunk world, I was face to face with, no doubt about it, a sculpture, a very fine piece as it happens by Luke Montgomery called Heaven on Earth, an altar form perhaps, or a Neolithic slab for human sacrifices, winged by wire, backlit, with something spooky, like umbilical chord preserved in formaldehyde at its heart.
So I was in a kind of sculpture park, albeit the dark, evil twin of YPS and Cass. This was post-apocalyptic world and I was witnessing either the death of advanced capitalism or its ultimate success. The fat controller was seen being pleasured by a lapdancer in the ladies toilet (seen through slats in the door before they were slammed shut), and appeared as a mannequin overseeing the workers toiling below. And what toil. Running on a giant hamster wheel to generate electricity, or endlessly pushing trolleys along a bleak, and really long railway track.
The workers were dressed in identical uniforms, and moved lifelessly. They collapsed on the ground, and would then twitch into life as though being charged up by electricity. There was a touch of the Planet of the Ouds from Doctor Who.
Up above us, a row of books would collapse like dominos, triggering a system of swinging barrels and cogs and pulleys which in turn released a silver ball which ran along a track before dropping into a bucket near the giant wheel. The ball would be polished and replaced and then the whole thing would crank up again.
I found a room where, on knocking, a door was opened by a pale, thin, Victorian butler who told me “he’s not here. He’s gone to see Yoshuwaaaah” over and over again. By “he” did he mean the fat controller?
But the workers were few in number. What happened to the rest of humanity. Evidence seemed scattered about. Patches of grass marked by stones suggested graves. There was video of humans living in pods, a la alien, enslaved or waiting for salvation. The last few survivors of what? War, disease, or political enslavement?
Much of the art followed a cyberpunk/steampunk theme, with touches of Alien and Doctor Who thrown in. Vessels glowing with lights. A sinister dentist chair turned into a mechanical killing machine . A body was slumped over a table. Tiny shrunken buildings were dotted about the place.
So what exactly was going on here?
This was a collaboration between Punchdrunk, the Old and New Vics and various invited artists. The intention was to combine art and theatre, and give it a sinister, uniquely Punchdrunk theme. What I liked most about the art was how tonally consistent it was, so that you could at least start to patch together a sense of some narrative from these fragment. But it was difficult to really get so excited about the art pieces in the same way as I did say with Lynn Chadwick’s piece up at Cass, or the St Ives Room at Pallant House. And there was a kind of familiarity with much of it, as though the makers had seen a lot of what I have seen over recent years, from the spectral multi-artist show at Belsay a few years back to the weirder outreaches of Mimefest (various mad Russians at the ICA.)
I liked the Punchdrunk element, especially the workers. There was something of Gormley about them, like living sculptures. And if the purpose of the exercise was to explore how art and theatre can work together, then this suggested that the route through is to to do just that, not to have the artwork as a backdrop, set dressing, but an equal, kinetic part of the proceedings.
If much of the art did not or was not allowed to stand out on its own, it certainly contributed to the atmosphere and other worldy feel of the event. But I missed some kind of dramatic impetus, a sense of things building up.
On the way out, I was given a very good brochure about the event. I’m not sure if it would have been helpful to have known more before I went in.
Being in Chichester, I missed the whole London Paper controversy. Apparently there was a big feature in the LP, explaining what was what, and as a result the rest of the 15,000 tickets sold out in a couple of hours. Foul, cried the Guardian. London Paper readers do not deserve to go to Punchdrunk events, ranted the Guardian (now do you believe me about how awful the leftwing media is?!). It might return in the Autumn, as with all Punchdrunk stuff, it’s worth a second viewing. But in the meantime, the Punchdrunk team move to Manchester and I can’t wait.
PS apparently Metropolis was a big part of the inspiration for the event; not a film I’ve seen somehow, but a quick google talks of a “vision of a horrific future with a favoured elite living on the surface of the earth enjoying a life of luxury, and a vast army of nameless workers living in a grim underground city toiling ten hour shifts”.
Here are some "official" pics taken from the Guardian website.
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