fn2. G. Wellbeck, ‘Stealing the Camera – Appropriating the Male Gaze’, in Face-Off, Angel Press, Mass., 2004. Also ‘Portrayal is Betrayal’, D. Smeaton, ibid.
fn3. T. Balzarro. Boundaries, FPP, 2001.
fn4. A considerably greater length of time than the conventional duration for art appreciation, which is fifty-six seconds. See A.K. Ridge, The Psychology of Perception, UNQP, 1996. See also T. Thomas, ‘The First Nine Yards’, Guardian, 12 August 1994, in which he raises troubling statistics on the amount of time consumers spend in a bookshop and the limited mass-market discounted produce they have to access in that time/space.
fn5. An issue brought up in the 1992 work, 24 hour Psycho, D. Gordon.
seven
Walking Blind. 1993–2004. Video loop. Variable durations. Installation view. Variable dimensions. Various collections.
IT IS NIGHT. A woman walks backwards with her eyes closed. Her face is held in exactly the same position while the background moves behind her. It becomes clear, through time, that she is holding the camera to her face.fn1 She walks, eyes closed, through a series of locations, a shopping centre, a city street, a park. At times she bumps into things, or narrowly avoids obstacles, some of which could potentially cause her injury. At other times she comes to a stop entirely, seemingly gripped by fear of hitting something unseen, even though there is no visible threat. She does not open her eyes throughout, even though, at times, the viewer can sense her powerful desire to do so.
Like earlier works by Shears, the face dominates the image and the work is a document of the human emotions expressed on a face during an arduous ‘game of trust’. The activity of ‘walking blind’, although first developed as a group psychology experimentfn2 is now widely used, from Stanislavsky’s acting ‘method’ to New Age ‘rebirthing’ and corporate human resources exercises. The difference, which some see as a radical critique of such exercises, is that, in Shears’s version, there is no one at the end of the walk to catch her.
Where this work departs from these games formats, and from Shears’s earlier work, is that the game is no longer played out in a ‘safe’, familiar environment, ‘among friends’. If it is a game of trust then how can it be played alone? Who is Shears trusting, who will save her from hurting herself? Is the work not in fact documenting a lack of trust; its loss? Can we even trust the artist?
This sense of jeopardy and the question of the purpose of the game is deeply traumatic for many viewers. Dramatic reactions have been noted, with viewers shouting at the screen. In interview, they have commented: ‘I couldn’t bear it, she was going to hit this window behind her, I started shouting, “Go to the left”, “Watch out!”, things like that. You want to help her but you can do nothing. It’s horrible.’ ‘It’s like she wants to hurt herself.’ ‘She wants to shut her eyes and make it all go away.’ ‘It’s like she’s screaming inside and no one can hear her.’ ‘It’s a cry for help.’fn3
More so than any other work, Walking Blind has created heated controversy, with different groups taking polarised positions on single issues within the work. Around the issue of ‘passivity’, some feminists regard the work as ‘irresponsible’: the image of a woman walking blind at night, in public, plays into stereotypes that women are powerless; that they want to be taken care of as much as they want their sexuality to be taken care of for them. Although there are no images of a sexualised nature, the word ‘rape’ comes up again and again in criticism of the work. The NO MEANS NO movementfn4 see in the image an ‘every woman’s worst nightmare scenario’ – ‘of walking blind and alone through deserted streets’. The voluntary ‘eyes closed’ is seen as being doubly metaphoric: on the one hand women are seen as being conditioned to this role of passivity, on the other it concerns our culture’s blindness to the issue of rape. From this perspective Shears is criticised as being ethically irresponsible.
On the other hand, many post-feminists passionately argue that the image means exactly the opposite – that Walking Blind is a test of strength, the first step towards self-emancipation. They highlight the courage Shears exhibits in walking eyes closed for fifteen minutes without giving up, or asking for help, giving in to fear, etc.
It is no doubt because the work can contain such a multitude of differing interpretations that this has become Shears’s iconic work. No other image from the YBA period, save perhaps Hirst’s formaldehyde sharkfn5 has been so pastiched and recycled as this.fn6 That so many interpretations have been spawned may be a result of the dreamlike quality and the lack of any guiding text by the artist, thus leaving the image open to ‘projection’ of meaning by others. Any comments that Shears has made about the work have only served to increase the enigma.fn7 One of the main reasons perhaps why Shears never discusses the meaning of her work is that she may not want it to be reduced to the biographical, no doubt because there has been such a great deal of fetishisation in the press around her mental health.fn8 Ironically, very few of her peers seem burdened by the same concerns. Quite the opposite, in fact, with several becoming infamous for their ‘wild’ behaviour (Emin) and for, in fact, documenting their own transgressions as artwork.fn9
It should be noted that this one work is not one but at least three, in a series over an extended period of years.fn10 The three versions (1993, 1999 and 2004) have only recently started being shown together. In each, the central figure is the same – Shears herself. It is as if, over the years, Shears has tested herself by enacting the same ritual.
In the third, most recent work, there is a sense of the event being staged. Shears walks blind with a confidence bordering on indifference, as if whatever she did, whichever way she moved, she would be safe. In fact, records show that there was an entire production team in the wings waiting to catch her, do her hair and make-up, photographers to record her, TV teams to interview her, after the fact. It is perhaps precisely that control that she wanted to escape from but she is caught in a double bind. There is no escaping her career, even if she were to trip and fall that too would become art. This newest work is chilling. It seems, ironically, to represent a desire perhaps to fall away from the lights and the cameras into a darker place, where vulnerability and danger might coexist once again. To return to the power of that first work, where she walked blind and alone into the darkness.
A LETTER FROM Lloyds TSB: ‘We confirm that we would like to you offer mortgage facilities to the amount of £895,000.’
Terence Conran’s Super Home book cover. Before and after images of a factory by a sewage-strewn canal, converted into a glass-walled open-plan waterfront apartment. A similar space converted into a trendy open-plan studio with bean bags, hi-tech entertainment consoles, sunken bath, sheet-metal kitchen and vast glass table.
An image of a Victorian hospital. The text read: ‘Development Opportunity.’ Further images of the space from five different angles. Of the view from the window.
A message from the arts editor at the Guardian, asking why he’d said no to the last two articles they’d offered him.
A printout on gazumping.
A letter from Lloyds TSB, extending the bridging loan on the sale of the property in Notting Hill.
Flyers Dot picked up on her trips to Bethnal Green, from community groups, Bangladeshi. Images of coloured faces in bright coloured clothes.
A computer-generated image of the projected new Bethnal Green architectural redevelopment plan for the area between Cambridge Heath and Mile End.
A call from the Lieder Gallery asking if Owen could deliver the text for the Nine Works asap – the Zurich show is in four days’ time.
FedEx boxes arriving every few hours.
That one image of her on the tape – walking backwards eyes closed, at night through unknown streets, in danger. Walking blind.
A week of fragments and passing images. No continuity. Everything disparate moving fast. At his desk, Owen was caught in the midst of it.
The phone rang.
‘Hello, can I speak to Dorothy Shears please?’
‘She’s not here. Who’s calling?’
‘It’s Jenny from Lambert and Higgs here, I’d like to confirm the property viewing.’
Owen took the details, then turned off the phone and walked through the flat. Dot had started packing Molly’s toys into boxes. Premature, he thought. All month he’d made himself change and adapt to their ways, forced himself to give in to the happy chaos.
He looked into the room that had become Molly’s. The stack of paintings that were almost as high as his knee. He picked one up. A picture of a house. Another beneath it was the same in a different colour, and the one beneath with two big trees and four big windows. He pulled the blue moon-and-stars covers back on her bed, tucked them in.
Musical beds. Most nights he had been woken by Molly and had to take the cold, dark walk to her tiny bed while she snuggled up to Dot. Other nights Molly had woken and gone through to Saul, and after he had talked her to sleep Saul had carried Molly into their room and placed her beside them. Owen couldn’t help but feel that Molly was doing this deliberately, that she sensed the subtle tension within the three and their imminent fragmentation when homes and jobs were worked out.
Dot had been losing sleep over Zurich, a week, tossing and turning and more than half of them with Molly invading the bed. Last night had been a night of hell. Molly complaining of a sore tummy at three in the morning. Dot rubbing her tummy, putting her between her and Owen till she fell asleep. Owen taking the sofa, then being woken around five by the sounds of Saul’s feet carrying Molly back to Dot’s bed. In the morning, when he got up to pee, he saw Saul’s door open and his bed empty. He tiptoed to his own bedroom then and saw.
Dot and Molly and Saul asleep together.
Dot was all high energy. Talking about four things at once on the tube to Bethnal Green with Molly on her knee, getting her all exited about their future.
‘It’s big with lots of space for, well, anything!’
Saul was away at another job interview, she said. She wished he was here to see it, then swiftly jumped topic.
‘But God, if I don’t make that ninth work. I mean, you must have an idea, if you could just give me an idea, I could film it, we could turn it round in a day, unveil it in Zurich.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And the text, you going to get it finished in time? If we don’t have the text I don’t know what’ll happen. There’s so much riding on this, even the mortgage. You have any idea how much this bridging loan is costing me? Is the text OK, you get to the end yet? Can I read it?’
‘Not yet, I’ll get it done on time, trust me.’
They were out of the tube, Molly bored and yelling for sweeties.
‘Shoosh, darling, don’t you want to see the nice new house?’
Dot led him past a mosque, the many shoes that lined the doorway and the voices from inside. They passed what must once have been the silk mills – one was now a discount clothing warehouse, a gang of Asian-looking kids brushed by them, listening to music on their mobile phones. In the not too far distance were the concrete schemes of Globe Town. They passed an arrowed street sign for the Museum of Childhood, but there was no sight of the museum.
Finally they arrived.
A new conversion, she’d said. The back court of the old Bethnal Green Hospital. Beyond the Victorian edifice were more modern ward buildings, post-war, vast, fairly featureless. Two or three of them had already been converted and had gardens outside. There were new trendy VW Beetles in fashionable yellow and a BMW parked outside.
The estate agent guy was ingratiating and Dot asked if she could view the property by herself, just give her ten minutes.
‘It looks great, aren’t you just so excited?’ she said to Molly.
Molly reached back for Owen’s hand.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘this could be our new house.’
Dot pushed the door open – ‘Tan-tara’ – and led them inside. She fished around for a switch. Neon strip lights came on. The place had been gutted and new power points had grown from the walls; the old lino must have been ripped up to reveal the concrete beneath. But the vast emptiness of it, the line of thirty windows on each side, the traces on the floor from what might once have been a nurse’s office, marked it all clearly as what it was – a hospital ward.
‘Wow, it’s perfect. Over here, I’m thinking, we’ll put up a fake wall, maybe out of glass bricks, you know, so as to let the light in.’
The space she wandered around was empty, but in her mind she had images of a place he could not see. Molly ran about picking plaster chips and nails off the floor and throwing them at the walls.
‘This would be the kitchen, I’d separate the work space from the living space with another glass wall and I’d have one of those walk-in bathrooms, no walls, just tiles everywhere, a wet room, showers and a sunken jacuzzi. Molly, where would you like to have your bedroom?’
The child looked perplexed.
The incongruity of it all struck Owen. Dot’s episode and her attempt and her hospitalisations.
‘What do you think, O?’ she shouted out. ‘Isn’t it perfect?’
He looked at her, so far away, at the other end of the big empty space. He could not picture the walls, the furniture, the fireplace and kitchen, the bedroom and glass walls. All he saw was the woman he loved standing shouting to him from the opposite end of a hospital ward. Molly came up to him.
‘And when Saul’s got his new place he’ll be just a bus ride away and so easy for Molly and you’re . . .’
If flashed before him then that she might say, ‘ . . . going to have your study right here and this will be our bedroom.’
She smiled. ‘ . . . I suppose you’ll have to change at Bank and then onto the Central Line, but it’s so close, don’t you think? Half an hour tops. Great, eh? I mean, can’t you just see it?’ as she spun round, her hands in the air.
Molly gripped his hand. The kid couldn’t see the pictures either.
‘Where’s your room, Uncle O?’
He squeezed her hand.
‘I don’t think I’m going to have one,’ he said. ‘I’ll just come and visit when Mummy’s finished making it all lovely for you both.’
He looked up at Dot.
‘It’s brilliant,’ he called out. ‘I can really see it.’
On the way back to his on the tube, he noted that the child cuddled up to him more than usual, as if she sensed that her mother’s plan for the future did not contain this man she’d grown used to. And he felt pity for that child, because maybe she knew even more about abandonment than he did. In two days’ time her mother would be off to Zurich, and it had still not been decided whether the child would travel with her mother, stay with the grandparents, or with Saul or himself, or if he or Saul would make the trip too.
On the tube images flashed by like the faces of many races.
The child looking up at him.
The hospital.
Dot’s mouth moving fast, but her words inaudible over the train noise.
He closed his eyes and saw again the child’s drawings. Many different colours but they were all ultimately the same. Of the same house and in that house there were not two or four but three people.
It was footage of three different films edited together in three adjoining vertical strips. On the left-hand screen Saul walked through a park in 1992 with his right hand extended. On the right-hand screen Owen walked through a supermarket with his left hand extended. The footage was from a month ago. On the middle screen Dot walked through a street with both hands extended. The footage seemed from five or so years ago.
‘So what do you think?’ she asked.
They were all sitting round her laptop and she was nervous. This was the great unveiling of the art she’d been making all month in her studio. She’d been through all the old tapes and found these three pieces of footage all from different times and places. It was to be the ninth work. She liked the arithmetic: three people times three films equals
nine. The footage froze on the screen. And Dot’s face was expectant, staring first at Owen then at Saul, asking what they thought.
‘Can we see it again?’ Owen said, playing for time.
‘God, you hate it, don’t you?’
‘No, no, not at all.’
He hadn’t hated it, and could see what she thought she’d been doing. She’d been trying to create the illusion of three different people in different films walking holding hands together. But she’d failed. The placing of the hands did not match up between the screens. Sometimes the hands were cut off halfway up a body or too low and ghost fingers and knuckles would appear on the edges of the frames, betraying the rough amateur assemblage. And the idea was hopelessly romantic, like some kitschy image from the sixties. Sentimental.
‘Shit. It’s crap, isn’t it? Fuck, what the hell am I going to do?’
‘Calm down,’ Saul said. ‘If you don’t like it don’t exhibit it.’
‘What? And just have eight works in a show called Nine!’
‘Well . . .’
‘You were supposed to help me, Owen. It’s fucked, if Zurich’s fucked then we’re fucked!’
She stormed out and Saul ran after her.
Owen stared at the screen as the three people in their three different times walked alone into their three different futures.
*
On the run home I had prepared a plan. If she could loan me five hundred we could get a place together, I’d get regular work, pay her back. I’d find a place in New Cross, close to the art school.
I burst through the front door.
— Dot?
No reply.
— Saul, are you OK? Has she been back? No reply.
His room was in almost total darkness. The stench of urine, sweat and sherry was overwhelming. The TV flickered blue light to the sounds of a crowd cheering. I reached for the light switch, and nearly tripped over him. He was naked, but for his kimono and one plimsoll, and lying on the floor. I tore open the curtains and acid-bright light burst in revealing many silver bags from the sherry boxes. He must have pulled them out and inflated them as if having a party by himself. Twenty or more, like space-age pillows, like Warhol’s silver balloons. I propped him up on the edge of the bed and he reached immediately for a sherry box. I took it from him and he struggled for it, like a child fighting for sweets.
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