Have you heard of the new Antony Gormley exhibition in London?
At the centre is an installation called “Blind Light”: a glass-walled box the size of a small room, filled with dense white mist, in which you’re invited to get lost for as long as you can bear it.
Once inside, you can see a few inches in front of your face; the rest is a bright, fluffy cloud, disembodied voices, and a vague outline of a human being when somebody stumbles within an arm’s reach.
While unveling the work, the sculptor wondered about the effect this will have on the visitors:
“On the one hand, you have lost all sense of location – left/right, front/back. You immediately are lost in space and that makes you anxious,” he said. “But at the same time I think there is a sense of euphoria that you are almost free of the body whilst being returned to it in a new way.
It’s a climatological experiment but also a sociological one. I don’t know how people will react to art of this kind. Light and water are two ingredients, but the third ingredient is the human content of the work and I will be interested to see how that evolves.”
Abel and I held hands for much of our trip inside.*
Except for the moment when we stopped, peered at each other through the cloud (you have to move really close together; really really close), and he whispered to me:
“Touch your toes.”
One smack, two, three. Not too loud; we don’t want to spook any other wanderers. Still, I wonder if I was the first person to have been spanked inside “Blind Light”? It’s only been open for a few days, right?
Obviously, we weren’t just fooling around in a room of artificial fog. We were experiencing this work of art as a couple: two lovers in a world in which we know nothing but each other, and as the mist threatens to rise between us, we cling to the intimate core of our relationship.
Without the eye of the beholder this piece of art misses its subject, it’s not complete – and we completed it with the most sincerity we could offer.
We were also fooling around a little, of course.
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* He admits to anxiety from the loss of direction; I was at the euphoric end: I spend most of my time lost anyway, and here I had an excuse to be.
I am sooooooo envious, quite sure you are the 1st to have been spanked inside “Blind Light”, lucky you and lucky Abel being the 1st Spanker. Best I can manage is having been spanked within a few feet of Gormleys “Another Place”, the Iron men on the beach, I’m sure quite a few of them were watching approvingly, but hard to tell really…
I felt the loss of direction I imagine Abel felt when walking round a similar installation but with darkness intermingled with crazy hippy type colour swirls at the Tate in Liverpool a few years ago, a very odd feeling of having no control… I loved it!
Awwww, this is very sweet
I think Mr Gormley will be delighted at this interpretation of his work.
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go! Any of you who is within striking (!) distance of London – do beg, borrow or steal tickets.
This really is a fantastic experience… both inside the room (a quite remarkable sensation) and from the outside, when people inside suddenly appear at the walls and themselves become the work of art on display.
I want to go back. And next time, I’m taking a cane…
Sounds like it is altogether possible then that you two gave those outside looking in, a little thrill. “Ooooo look, there’s a woman bending over…and there’s a man smacking her…” I’d have to go with Abel’s response to feeling lost. It would remind me too much of driving through thick fog and nothing scares me more than that.
I really wish I lived within striking distance of London as this thing seems pretty neat. Hmph! Maybe some day it will grace the states with it’s wonderfulness.
Rob – we weren’t *that* bold: we were firmly in the middle of the mist when I spanked Haron!
Now, the thought of Wanda being within ‘striking distance’… 😉
You inspire another pervy thought. One of the other installations comprises 31 lifesize statues of the sculptor on rooftops of buildings around central London, all looking towards the viewing gallery. I’m kinda thinking of spanking a girl on the gallery, with the 31 men watching…
Abel: I dare you to be THAT bold!!….and that prompts another pervy thought…who can be the most bold???….and what does one win???
as long the girl you have in mind isn’t me 😛
Here’s a hilarious topical item from the fake news site NewsBisuit:
Antony Gormley ‘exaggerating the size of his genitals’