Between Gallery and Performance: Punchdrunk & Tim Crouch

The smell of the river rises from the damp brick walls and wet ceilings. The floors are uneven and a misty light makes the size of this space hard to grasp. My ears pick up sounds, soft and shrill, from all around. I step closer to a mausoleum of diffracted light, it’s Luke Montgomery’s Heaven on Earth – I discover later on.

The deeper I go into this cavern, the more my eyes adjust to the visual temperature of space. I follow a mechanism that leads me to a miniature petrol station. Tucked away in the shadows of a former toilet, it’s Slinkachu’s Service Station. The delicate nature of this object invites me to the floor for an encounter at eye level. A door opens close to me. The moment is gone.

I am in the depths of the vaults now, squinting at a stripper through a hole in a door. I knock three times but receive no response. I move towards a constellation of light bulbs – but no sooner gone, than the stripper door opens and I miss my chance to meet the man inside…

Punchdrunk’s curation of Tunnel 228 is intriguing. It is a negotiation of art, space and performance. The composition is theatrical, with lighting, performer and structure working in unison; the space is evocative and primed for discovery; but the artwork, while clearly a prominent feature, is not the piece’s main focus. Punchdrunk are well known for presenting broken narratives and inviting their audiences to come in and pick up the pieces, but story in Tunnel 228 is as diffuse as it gets. This denial of focus, be it on performance, artwork or otherwise, creates an intriguing tension that demands further reflection here.

Art galleries are often white, geometrical spaces with clearly defined architecture. Inside the exhibition space, artwork exists in near isolation, clinically sectioned off. This state of tabula rasa allows the work to dominate. Brian O’Doherty points out In Inside the White Cube – The Ideology of The Gallery, that the existence of art is characterized by a modernity of display. The gallery gains a limbo like status, it feels eternal, complete, separate.

This status is explored in Tim Crouch’s England, currently on at the Whitechapel Gallery. It’s another meeting point between art and performance. Crouch’s text describes a heart transplant. The progression of the disease leading up to the operation is laid out in the gallery space. In an imaginary tour that starts inside the gallery and travels through churches and hospitals, we discover (through two narrated voices) the true nature of the Londoner’s disease. In the second part of the play, the audience is moved into another austere theatrical space (a conference room) where we are presented with a lecture on the ethical implications of the transplant.

For Crouch, the gallery is a setting and the artwork a landscape. The text brings out different meanings in the artwork on display, and thus the gallery becomes a protagonist in the play. The narrators speak in an atonal, informative manner, questioning the isolationist character of the white cube space and the distance it forms between exhibited art and the outside world.

In Tunnel 228, this distance is not as sharply emphasized. The vaults create a different relationship with the outside world. In his introduction to the piece, Kevin Spacey talks of a dialogue between the inside and outside of the tunnel. A dialogue about the machinery humans create, about relics and about what the past looks like in the present.

Voyeurism is where both gallery and performance meet. The experience of looking becomes a physical action. What is bold about Tunnel 228 is its attempt to use voyeurism to challenge the place of art. It is also an incentive to uncover abandoned space, to step out of the white cube, the black box, the formal space; in search of complexity and a new form of interdisciplinary performance in tune with today’s cultural landscape.

I’m still inside this landscape, this dark tunnel. I walk past Atma’s Metropolis Souls in the most fitting of settings. My face is sweating behind the mask as I face the souls, empty like a church mural. I move on and catch the recurring image of Vhils’ Boss Face. It reminds me of a Ceauşescu caricature that was once graffitied all over the metro stops, alleyways and nightclubs of Bucharest.

As I head for the exit, I turn around one more time. The space seems more convoluted now, people are walking in groups, touching the cold walls with their hands, walking past the ushers, muted bodies all too clearly defined. I try to imagine what this space has become for me. I want to be the only breathing body inside.