1 November 2005

A site-specific sound and performance installation inspired by surreal dream states, triggered by the collision of improbable images encountered in an international airport transit zone lounge.

The piece was created for the first ever Future Cinema (now Secret Cinema) event, designed around a main screening of experimental surrealist film “Dreams That Money Can Buy”. It was one of many theatrical actions accompanying short film screenings and musical bands at the event, which had a curated theme of “surreal burlesque”. The event was attended by over 1,000 people.

The piece used as its starting point old metal detector gates discovered in a space of passage in the London Bridge underground vaults, which the performance installation "transformed" into an airport transit zone. Sound was an important element in creating a suspended state of ‘neither here nor there'; a sound loop layered airport atmosphere with flight announcements and ‘inner voice’ whispers in different languages, in a kind of stream of consciousness. A performer dressed as a (burlesque) traveller enacted being lost and trapped in the space, interacting with audience members and asking them if they had seen his lost passport. Installation elements included masks, empty and suspended at eye level or fitted on transparent figures of travellers. The result was an investigation of the liminal experience of threshold and the passage between worlds, and of the fluid nature of identity.

Conceived in 2005, London-based events company Future Cinema set out to create immersive and social cinematic experiences as an alternative to the multiplex, by staging large cinema events that incorporate aspects of theatre as well as audience participation. Using abandoned or disused buildings, it explores narratives as well as space in its productions. Presently, events are attended by over 100,000 people. This form of ‘Live Cinema’ introduces site-specific, immersive cultural experiences, marrying narratives with play-along action, in unique participatory social experiences. Fuelled by a desire to fill the void left by an over-saturated technological world, it invites audiences to lose themselves in serendipitous, imaginary environments that challenge the way we perceive culture and social interaction.

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Location: SE ONE nightclub (London Bridge Vaults), London, UK

Created for Future Cinema event at the London Film Festival

Sound by Anand Gary; voice of Angeliki Athanasiadou

Performed by Christopher Routh

Materials: plaster of Paris, chicken wire, PA sound system