Richard Grayson: 'The Golden Space City of God'.

Watson, Joseph Benjamin

Matt's Gallery, London 13 May-28 June 2009

One reviewer of Richard Grayson's large-scale video installation The Golden Space City of God suggests that the 'dark cube' that hosts such installations has now replaced the 'white cube' as the experimental space par excellence. True, perhaps, and this usefully hints at the importance not just of video but of space to this work. For Grayson has not simply produced a projection devoid of context, but one that self-consciously creates a community space, as the accompanying guide suggests, 'that speaks of the formation of group identities and ideas of self-improvement and aspiration'. Instrumental to this group identity is the act of making sound, which comes as little surprise given Grayson's earlier piece Messiah (a Country & Western re-setting of the texts from Handel's oratorio) and also serves to mask and finally heighten the unfolding prophetic horror of this powerful work.

Directed into a darkened room by a torch-bearing attendant, the viewer is confronted by rows of uncomfortable plastic chairs of the type found in community halls worldwide. Taking our places, the film begins and the choir on screen take theirs, appearing from behind the camera as though coming from among us. With a text based on that of a US Christian sect, The Family, this ten-movement apocalyptic 'oratorio' tells of the coming of the Antichrist at a moment in history that resonates disturbingly with our own: 'Because of world war in the Middle East and a crisis in oil, dollar-based currencies and stocks will become worthless and banks will fail.' The work, sung unaccompanied by the choir, describes the reign of the Antichrist, the resulting chaos, and the subsequent second coming of Christ who triumphs over the Devil. After a reign of peace and harmony, 'God's great Heavenly Space City' will descend to Earth before departing to conquer other worlds and universes.

Most shocking, perhaps, is that it takes some time (the complete work is 43 minutes long) for the horror of this apocalyptic vision to truly settle in the mind of the viewer. The auditory element of Grayson's work, written by composer Leo Chadburn, is therefore critical for two reasons: the first is that the recitative-like music gives authority to the words being sung. Far from appearing fantastical or even infantile --when the choir sing of the Antichrist branding his followers with, 'their own credit barcode--or injected with a preprogrammed sub-skin PIN 666 chip implant', or of the Golden Space City itself descending from above, 'The greatest space vehicle ever created ... built by the Lord and on its way down to Earth now'--the text possesses a gravity and urgency that is unimaginable without the accompaniment of music.

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The second reason brings us to the relationship of sound and space. As Brandon LaBelle has eloquently written: 'Sound is intrinsically and unignorably relational: it emanates, propagates, communicates, vibrates, and agitates; it leaves a body and enters others ... It seemingly eludes definition, while having profound effect.' (1) In that important sense sound, like God, is something that can only be known apophatically or through its relationship with other known quantities. While the music here possesses its own signifiers (of the historical and religious dignity of choral recitative), it is also clear that the work gains its meaning through the text and the space in which it is sited. For acoustical experience, as LaBelle points out, 'is embedded in the conversation of sound and space, as a reciprocal exchange, for sounds are positioned within given spatialities'. The space Grayson carves out is intentional and important because of the way in which sound and space here articulate one another; no surprise given that Grayson is as well known for his curatorial success as his art.

The Golden Space City of God calls us not only to re-examine our own beliefs for those moments when sound theological reflection steps into the realms of fantasy, but identifies the powerful role sound and space have held in religion and the formation of collective identities. If churches and cathedrals have provided the history of the relationship of sound and space, is it the case that spaces of art will become (perhaps already are) the future prophetic spaces of our culture; the communal spaces of harmony and dissonance?

(1.) Brandon LaBelle, Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (New York & London: Continuum, 2006)

Joseph Benjamin Watson works at the V&A and is a member of the Arts Policy and Planning Committee of St Paul's Cathedral, the Programme Group of Wallspace, and an Advisor to ACE.