Midwinter Madness At The ICA

The days are so short now, it feels like the world is ending, and yet there is a fantastic beauty to this time which I adore. People who live further towards the equator will never quite understand the poledwellers' manic activity, as we bustle about busily ignoring the fact that daylight vanishes before our eyes, determining to set things in order before it gets really cold.

I went to the ICA last night to the opening of two exhibitions. Vasulka Lab 1969 - 2005 was particularly fun. Us early birds witnessed the drama of Mr Vasulka knob-twiddling in the gallery, crouching by his apparatus, trying to get his cameras to spin, propellor-like, around a Dr Who silver globe. I realised I was watching a great man at work - several people were photographing him, and so I joined in.

After five minutes, fascinating though this was, I felt guilty obtaining gratuitous images of him struggling and failing to make his device go, and I had no wish to further humiliate the man at his moment of technical hitch by recording more of it for posterity. Lucy Mutton and I wandered off into the other room, which was dark and contained something that was working, a robotic camera on a pillar in the middle of the space. It looked initially to me like a cyborg lingam, training its lazer sight upon target screens surrounding it like religious icons, and steadily ignoring us merely human intruders.




I felt that we would be assimilated before we left the building - after all, as any trekkie knows, the borg are merciless. It was all squares, circles and diamonds, and it reminded me of retro club visuals from the early 1970s - not as much fun as watching the cutting edge emigre artist with a svelte white goatee twiddle his knobs, so went back to the other room.

Eventually, Woody gave up, and the nice ICA techie plugged in a replacement power supply which although it trailed messily across the floor and slightly spoiled the aesthetic, actually powered the thing and off it went, round and round and round, the cameras pointing in line at the globe in the middle, sending images to the monitors. More squares and circles. With both rooms' mechanisms now in motion, everybody breathed a sigh of relief and began to enjoy themselves. The optics were delightful, the globes on the monitors endlessly recycling the changing room in a dreamlike sideways melting movement - a lovely piece, we thought. Woody and friend spontaneously sang what sounded like a Czech religious song to inaugurate the show. What an interesting crowd, we observed. Once again, I was in the right place. How do I manage to do this so often? Being an ICA member helps...

I stood in front of the monitor, watching a black and white optical effect that made me faintly seasick, and deemed it a fabulous success. Seriously, wonderful. Cutting edge in 1968, and damn funky now. Here's the video I made with my phone.

At the exhibition, Lucy and I were discussing my bad tooth, and she mis-heard me and thought I said I was selling my tooth on Ebay. Hang on, I thought, that's a good idea isn't it? That way, I can raise the money to pay the dentist! So, starting tomorrow, my tooth is on sale for one week only, ends Christmas day, item number 5647684509.

Here's how it looks:



Guess I had better make a selling-my-tooth-on-ebay blog.