Actually it was bollocks that nobody would drive a tank over that efflorescence of life. Because they had done since, and were doing, in Bahrain, Syria. Had always done, throughout world history. Or sometimes had and sometimes hadn’t. What made the difference? Well, of course you could do political analyses, median income, level of education, etc., but that wouldn’t quite get to it. Sue was sure you could do an analysis, say in theory you did an analysis of two places and found them to be absolutely identical, both on the tipping point of revolution. And what would happen then is that one would go and the other wouldn’t. You would never be able to put your finger on what made the difference. Because it would come down to, maybe it would come down to just one thing, just one soldier deciding not to shoot, or one colonel deciding not to give an order. And what would be the explanation for that? Maybe just a feeling that one person had. And where would that feeling come from? From everywhere. From a face he had seen in the crowd that morning, or from something his mother had said to him fifteen years before, or from a bit of grit getting stuck beneath his eyelid, or because he was tired, or because somebody he knew had died recently and he was grieving, or because he had not been given a promotion, or because he had stubbed his toe on the leg of his desk, or because he had eaten a specially juicy plum at breakfast, or some specially bracing olives, or because he had heard a raven croaking or seen a swallow, high-up, turning in the sky. Or actually, possibly, just conceivably from some secret, deeply held, rationally worked-out, principled position which only at that moment was getting the chance to come to light.
But then the thing was that that decision wasn’t much, wasn’t anything really, by itself: – only if it contributed to a feeling someone else had, and someone else, and someone different, and another person, and someone else. Etc. Or not. At any point the line of dominoes or the one grass brushing against another, the one tumbling stone knocking into another, could stop, the impetus not be transferred. Like say a stick – she brought her unfocused eyes to focus on the oleaginous river surface which was darker now – floating down the river, and snagging on a bit of the bank, and then another stick snagging on it, and another, etc. etc. Holding there tremblingly with the water pushing against it. And either they would build a barrier, one fortuitously cantilevered against another which aleatorily buttressed a third, etc; or they would not. Either they would be stronger or the water would be stronger, and break them with the surprising weight of its inertia, and disperse them and chase them and scatter them and sweep them away and cast them up here or there along the muddy bank.
‘Sorted,’ said springy, efficent Stuart, appearing from behind the pile of televisions where he had been working on something to do with the digital to analogue converters, as Sue would put it; or, as he would put it, trying to reduce the stochastic quantisation noise that was inevitably produced by the conversion of digital data back into an analogue signal, i.e. in this case actual video. Obviously Sue had wanted some fuzziness so as to foreground the materiality of the image; but not so much that it became an irritant. The consequent fine-tuning was now complete.
‘Huge thanks,’ she said, smiling at him frankly.
‘I’ll be in early tomorrow,’ he said, tensely, responsibly. ‘Let me just run through, the ones that need sparking tomorrow are: your Philip’s bits of grass, Hsin-Yu’s face of the Buddha in China, which is gonna switch to infrared at 2 pm, and our own one focused on the pavement outside, the footfalls coming in and out, which I’ll set up – but for those other two, I’ve got the web addresses, I just need you to make sure the webcams go live when they’re meant to.’
‘I will,’ said Sue.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, stomping workmanlike out through the gallery, not looking to left or right, his shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, heading off home.
Sue was so happy. Being on the brink of something good – no, being on the brink of something that was as likely as you could get to be really good, to really do something. Because you couldn’t be sure that it was actually doing something until you saw it going to work on people, saw how they reacted. And probably even then there was inevitably always a bit of disappointment because it never had quite the impact you would like. But that was the danger, that was the excitement; and now, here, at this moment, before the slide of the unavoidable slight disappointment, when you could tell yourself that this time it was going to be simply brill, this time there was going to be no unavoidable slight disappointment at all: this had to be the best. Because actually – here was the funny thing. You wouldn’t want there not to be the disappointment. Because what the disappointment showed was the work going out into actual people’s lives who never reacted quite as you expected, quite as you would like. But, here’s the point: you wouldn’t actually want them to react as you expected! You wouldn’t like them to react as you would like! Still, while she understood that intellectually, really held to it as a principle of audience empowerment, she nevertheless felt it, lived it, each time as an unavoidable slight disappointment. Which was why this minute of being on the brink of it was the best.
In black jeans and a black T-shirt, her uniform for the work of physically constructing an exhibition, she turned and walked back through the gallery, her trainers chirrupping on the polished floor.
Now she was in the narrower space with the names on one wall and the photos on the other. What was fun about this was that, each time you walked through, you could zoom in on a different sitting room and/or a different clutch of names. With her arms out like wings she banked suddenly low down to the right. Japanese. Pale, symmetrical, nowhere to sit, except the floor, or rather those thick woven mats. Paper sliding walls. So calm. And actually really fiercely different. Because, though the look had been made familiar by Heals and by Habitat, R.I.P, the reality of it, when you actually properly looked at it, actually imagined your way into it, tried to imagine being a person who would actually enjoy being in that space, could actually relax there (if ‘relax’ was in any way the right word) then it hit you. There was nowhere to bloody sit! There was nothing to bloody do!
Sue unbent her body, took a step back, spun round and zoomed in on a name:
Carmen Dell’Aversano
Of whom she knew nothing. Her eyes flicked down:
Habib Musa Farah
Ditto. And across:
Charles Proddow
Ditto. And down again:
Shyni Varghese
Ditto. No recognition. Just letters. She defocused her eyes and disengaged her body, stepping back, turning, looking at nothing in particular. In her was a feeling of thwartedness and, circling around it, stalking it, tugging at it was vertigo because of – well because of the simple fact that these were little black letters on a white wall, and they went to make up names, and each name was the name of a person who had a body and a pulse and eyes and a whole way of being in the world, an apprehension of the world, and she, Sue, knew nothing of them, would never know anything of them except these names which she had happened to point her eyes at; and they were worse than nothing because they gave you a feeling of how much was missing, as though the person had been abducted and all that was left was this name which wasn’t in fact really anything left, as such, because what it showed was the missingness more than the person. That was why it was so good that the wall looked like a wall of commemoration even though these were people who were alive, so far as she knew, or at least so far as she had known during the process of compilation which had finished, what, a week ago. So maybe one or two of them – she eyed the wall again – no longer were. But almost all of them would be and that was why it was so odd, so strong, to represent them in this way, because it brought an emptiness into the heart of life. Because although in a sense it was obvious, yes, that was right, she should revel in this, she should be proud of it – the fact that what the show was saying, if you summed it up, was completely fucking obvious. So, despite the fact that what it said was completely fucking obvious, the way these obvious facts about b
eing a person, now, in our world, where we are so aware of so much else, of so many other people, without being genuinely connected to them; the way these obvious facts were presented in this show really did, she hoped, really would, she hoped, make them strike people in a new way. Which was after all what Art was for: to take the obvious and ram people’s faces into it so that it hurt, so that they actually saw it, felt it, rather than being trite about it, rather than turning their faces away.
Here was Shirley with the V-shaped fluffy push-along floor cleaning thingy having a last trawl through for dust and litter.
Though she wondered, actually, how real that Japanese sitting room really was. Because the thing about the others, pretty much all of them, was that they were messy and scuffed, etc. – and part of the power (she hoped) of the display was in that messiness, because people were so used to seeing idealised photographs of things in e.g. interiors magazines that it was actually a shock to see an array of photographs of rooms that people actually lived in. But she did wonder whether the Japanese room really was that, or whether it was more of an ideal, even for them. More of a museum piece. Still, never mind, it had its place, and that aspect of it, that question which it raised, was part of what that photo brought to the collage. Plus the really startling thing, the really real thing, that it was one of so few rooms to differ from the standard model. She had been first surprised and then dispirited, in researching this piece, to discover that there actually was a global hegemony of the three-piece suite. Even most of the African examples had one, like for instance there was a Nigerian one in blue leather in what was obviously a pretty impoverished dwelling but which had still been invaded by this western apparatus for sitting on. So that, well, there was nothing to say about it, really. You had to get over being dispirited and open your eyes and look. Because that is just the way things are.
She felt flatter now as she wandered through to the first room. Anxious. Very tired. Not anxious about the Elton Barfitt connection or actually non-connection any more: that seemed to have gone dead as an issue since Charlotte had talked it through with Omar one last time a couple of weeks ago. Since when he had been calm and accepting, withdrawn almost. Like the fact that today, the day before the opening, he simply was not here. Well, I suppose that was making the point that it was her show, hers and Charlotte’s; and that he was concentrating on his own baby, Art and Language, opening in Oct . . . No, it was more just anticipation tipping into anti-climax before the climax had even happened. What if no one liked it? What if the press rubbished it? Because obviously Omar was right: it was a risk to run something without a name attached to it. If not the name of an Artist, then the name of a Movement or a Group. And if no one . . . but, come on Sue, what is this? – that was the whole idea; that had always been the whole idea. Words from the press release appeared like subtitles in her mind:
‘Human culture is the artist whose selected works are featured in this exhibition.’
‘Because nature, nowadays, is culture too.’
‘What are the boundaries of your habitat? Where, finally, do you belong?’
But here are the glass doors swinging open and here is Caro, lovely Caro bustling through. ‘Are you alright?’ – Caro said, when she saw Sue and focused on her, stopping, her eyes widening a little.
‘Oh just tired,’ said Sue. ‘Overexcited, probably.’ Sue saw that she was near the blocky white sofa that was the centrepiece of the staged sitting room. She edged past the corner of the heavy, dark-wood, pseudo-Moroccan coffee table and let herself slump.
Odd, though, that doing that, doing that simple thing, on this ordinary sofa, felt different. Just because the sofa was in this space. Even with no one here yet, or rather no public here yet, to watch. You couldn’t just sit; you had to pay attention to the fact that you were sitting. You were yourself and you were part of the artwork both at once.
Sue allowed the feeling of strangeness to prickle along her arms, to tense her toes, to sidle along the upper surface of her thighs. No, sod it, it was good, it was strong, it was something she should be proud of.
Caro was perching on the edge of the wickerwork bucket chair that was situated to the right of the sofa as you looked at the scene from the front which was the way in. ‘We’re all set in the shop,’ she said too loudly; and then she smirked and seemed to want to shrink into herself as the sound echoed briefly around.
And that was good, too, dammit: how they had done the merchandise so as to be an extension of the show not a trivialisation of it, definitely not a slew of sentimental souvenirs. The punters could buy postcards that were exactly the same as the photos of the sitting rooms in the second gallery. And they could buy the catalogue which gave extra information, esp. the sources of those photos, plus of the streams in the third gallery, plus of the furniture in the first including the sofa she was sitting on now. So that having had the experience they could access information about the origins of the experience. Having been in the place they could see maps of the other places to which this place was connected, i.e. which it extended into and so which weren’t exactly ‘other’ after all. And that shift from experience to information would be made available for them to think about. So that the evanescence and the power, the bewilderment of the experience would be the stronger, hopefully, because of that contrast.
So, for instance, Sue knew that the thing she was slumped in, the white cotton-and-polyester-covered sofa, had been transported a distance of 1.37 miles to the gallery on the back of a seven-year-old Toyota pickup. Source address: 27 Turing Crescent. Generous owners Cyrus and Sheila Jilla, retired.
Whereas the wickerwork bucket chair where Caro perched had been carried to the gallery in the arms of Rory Hardwick from his student room in Lyell Building, Hewlett Street (though of course the rattan for the wicker had voyaged a long way before that from a plantation somewhere, like for instance maybe South Kalimantan).
While between them was a tall lamp converted from a late Victorian hatstand by one Ed Homburg in 1932 and passed on by him to his son Richard and passed on by him to his daughter Angharad who had driven it 10.7 miles to the gallery in her mauve Renault Clio from her little terraced cottage at 4, Mill Buildings, Eldham.
Opposite was that modernist classic-or-cliché, the Marcel Breuer ‘Club Chair’ constructed from steel tubes and leatherette straps and transported by X a distance of Y miles from Z location. Then there was the pseudo-Moroccan coffee table, which had been, etc. And a low, square stool-cum-occasional-table, covered with a piece of pale blue crochet lace manufactured in Gurmandi, Punjab and brought to the UK by S.V.S. Phaneendra forty-one years before. There was a pouffe. There was a big, grubby, reddish, bobbly woollen rug. There was a heap of newspapers with different titles and dates on the pseudo-Moroccan table. And a prominent women’s magazine. And the TV Times. And a Panasonic 37–inch flatscreen TV with Virgin box. And a ball of pink wool. And a small toy car. And some sheets of paper covered with kiddies’ scribbles done by Darren and Ada Polonsky, aged two and a half and four and a quarter. There was a woven plastic waste-paper basket whose contents included, among snot-stuck tissues and a bent Pepsi can, the thoroughly bitten-round, brown, dry core of an apple which enclosed the tiny shrivelled carcass of a maggot. There was dust. There was a stray segment of orange Hot Wheels track. There were two dirty coffee cups and a whisky glass in which a gluey liquid pooled. There was a round aquamarine crystal paperweight full of air bubbles. There was the half-life-size wooden statuette of a mallard duck. Full details of the source locations of all these constituent parts of the work, together with grateful acknowledgment to their owners, can be found in the accompanying catalogue, price £14.99.
Oh but Sue was sleepy now. Allowing herself to relax.
‘It’s a shame,’ Caro said, ‘Charlotte had to duck out earlier, missing this last calm before the storm.’
‘It was only trapped wind,’ said Sue: ‘She’ll be up again tomorrow.’
‘Ouch that can be so painful,’ said Caro, maki
ng her whole body wince.
Then, when Sue said nothing, Caro added blankly: ‘Poor thing.’
Then, when Sue still said nothing, Caro said: ‘Look. Shall I help you up? I’ll walk you along to Charlotte’s, OK?’
‘We’ve probably both been overdoing it,’ said Sue, gratefully, holding up her arms.
‘It’s,’ said Caro, grasping Sue’s wrists, leaning backwards, ‘gonna be a triumph.’
As the two women eased, one after the other, along the edge of the pseudo-Moroccan coffee table, Philip, 54 miles away, eased along the sharper edge of the square, pine, shiny coffee table that was among the furnishings of the little house in Eden Grove that was his and Sue’s (rented) for the circle of the year. He let himself slump into the bagginess of the leatherette sofa which squeaked and crackled on receiving him. He reached out to place his phone on the table and then leaned forward to look at it. Nothing.
Of course there was fucking nothing because if there had been something it would have made a noise.
In his mind he slammed his hand on the table and rose and strode around the room but in his body he did nothing, just stayed there sitting worriedly.
And anyway of course there was nothing because it was, what, two hours since they had agreed the most likely thing was that Albert had gone on the boat with Ash whose phone was suspiciously switched off. So probably he had gone with Ash’s knowledge i.e. basically been kidnapped. Or else, just possibly, he might have stowed away, though Janet did not want to contemplate that scenario because it meant that Albert preferred his father to her.
‘No,’ Philip had blurted: ‘No it doesn’t. He’s not thinking. It’s a panic reaction. He wants to grab the parent who’s leaving, that’s all. If it was you leaving he’d grab you.’
If you – the words had continued in his mind – were the one playing games, the one Albert knew he could not rely on, instead of someone who had always been there for him, always wanted the best for him above all else.
The World Was All Before Them Page 23