Barbican Centre
26 June - 4 August 2013
I've always been a fan of interactive and participatory artworks, and London's latest instalment Dalston House was just the type of work I love going to see. Having read about Leandro Erlich's work before, I was intrigued to experience his manipulation of visual and spatial dimensions in the flesh.
What struck me immediately was its nonchalant and honest simplicity. The first thing you see is the huge and imposing mirror, and in effect that is all there is to this illusion: the mirror. However I found myself drawn to the metal scaffolding holding the mirror up. Erlich has purposely allowed the viewer to be able to see the exposed mechanism behind the illusion. Nothing is concealed, there are no smoke and mirrors to the work's production. Every person participating in this work knows more or less how it works, how the illusion transpires ─and still...the magic and curiosity is still very much there. If anything, the pleasure received from the work is even more so somehow when you realise how straightforward it is in its construction.
People are always fascinated by their reflections. Even now when you see someone walk down the street and they catch their reflection in a mirror unexpectedly, they look intrigued or surprised as if seeing themselves for the first time. Seeing one's self allows an unusual, out of body semblance; an awareness of one's body and its ordinary constructs and restrictions in real time and space. Dalston House enables the impossible ─but not in actual physicality, just in the reflected image. Yet this is enough to reverse our rational understanding of our bodies and its capabilities. Participants became acrobats, superheroes, people with gravity defying abilities and contortions. Ironically enough, most viewers were adamantly trying to recreate a realistic portrayal of gravity, dangling upside down for example was popular, or sitting a window ledge from a seeming twenty or so feet off the ground. People were trying to create fantastical scenarios but within the realms of believable physics, as if this makes the illusion even more seductively deceptive. Creating a sub-real reality from the unreal. You get how it works, you see how it works, but you still find yourself staring at your own reflection thinking "I'm dangling upside down from a window ledge." You may know you're lying on the ground but this feels irrelevant when your body becomes the best full scale puppet you've ever had to play with.
It appears that Erlich's main intention is to encourage creativity and play within a collective group arena. It was an opportunity for imaginative activity where families, couples and groups came together to create the most original and inventive compositions. Anticipation was just as much a part of the work as the actual taking part, for those queuing would begin discussing their own grand master plans of what to perform next whilst observing those already doing so. The work becomes a playground for all ages, where all of a sudden anyone and everyone who approaches the work becomes a performer on a stage to be watched. It is just as enjoyable watching others perform as it is performing yourself.
Its placement on a sleepy London street means it could have been easily bypassed by anyone who didn't know it was there, suggesting that Erlich is trying to reiterate the spectacles we may find in the seemingly ordinary constructs of everyday life, easily missable if you don't care to look.
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