In researching my project for the ICA, one of the world’s premier contemporary art institutions, I learned about a long history of bad blood. This was reflected in numerous stories about conflict, budget shortfalls, and revolts, all of which was appropriate materialized and memorialized under a piece of plexiglass in the ICA offices. There is a pencil scrawl reading, “This is Norman’s Blood,” the trace of an altercation between a curator and an actor. I also read about the night the German industrial band, Einstürzende Neubauten, tried to jackhammer through the floor during a concert in an effort to break through the supposed tunnels below that allegedly form an escape route from Buckingham Palace and other key sites on The Mall. I wondered if anyone had ever considered how the building itself felt about all of this.
Inspired by 19th century tropes about the pseudo-biological functioning of buildings, the history of haunted houses, and sick building syndrome, I resolved to allow the building to express its trauma. I hacked into the lighting system of the ICA studio, the same room where Jean-Michel Basquiat had been in residence in 1984, making the lights to flash on and off at the speed of a human heart rate until overtaken by an arrhythmia and an arrest. I also tracked down the infamous jackhammer concert, which played through a subwoofer, channeled the ghosts of past violences.
Curatorial text:
In response to In formation III’s investigation into the connections between institutional structures and perceptions of the psyche, Toronto-based artist Mitchell Akiyama develops a site-specific installation in the Studio. Utilising sound and light and their affective relationship to bodies both present and absent, Akiyama actuates the architectural and infrastructural elements of the space, transforming it into a pulsating, seething and inscrutable presence. Tuning the space to its own material and energetic potential, this multi-sensory installation is a haunted house, a sick building, another room speaking back.
Curated by Astrid Korporaal