White goggles, ghostly whispers and forgotten spaces

Using the Royal Academy of Arts as its canvas Symphony of a Missing Room is a sensory exploration of the way in which visitors conduct themselves in a gallery. Along with a cluster of four other participants we began our tour in the main exhibition space, where the venue technicians and staff were still in the process of preparing for the summer exhibition. With many portraits still to be hung, walls being sanded and varnished – coupled with curator’s instructions such as ‘Info Panel Here’ scrawled onto scraps of brown paper – the calm ambience normally associated with this pristine gallery was nowhere to be found.

With a wide smile, our first nameless tour guide told us each to take a seat on one of the stalls that were scattered in the archways of the gallery space. The main thread that pulsates through Symphony of a Missing Room, is that we should reexamine the way that we consume art and respond to galleries. The first exploration of this concept began with the aforementioned act of sitting down, rather than walking briskly through the space; these moments of enforced stillness focused my mind enabling me to really examine and absorb the works that surrounded me. After a short while the grinning guide returned to place sound-cancelling headphones over my ears. At first all I could hear was muffled soundscape peppered with booming footsteps; those noises slowly transformed into a childlike voice that uttered instructions softly.

Having been instructed to close my eyes, the audio asked me to consider not only the artworks that were presently in the room but those forgotten pieces that had previously hung there. The echoes and whispers of artists that had previously inhabited the space filled the room. This sensory experience (devised by Swedish-born artists Lundahl & Seitl) then intensified as white goggles were then placed over my eyes. Unable to rely on two of your primary senses was daunting at first; you are left no choice but to take the ghostly hand that is offered to you as the tour continues. This multi-sensory interactivity is littered with the unexpected, and that it is a truly unique way to explore the public and private spaces of the Royal Academy.

In a nutshell Symphony of a Missing Room is surreal, clever and will leave you feeling disorientated. The only frame of reference that I can think to parallel it to would be Fuel Theatre’s Ring –a work which I saw last year at the Edinburgh Fringe – performed in pitch black with only an audio to guide you. Once again, the LIFT festival should be applauded for their daring and experimental programming. Lundahl & Seitl have created performed variations of Symphony of a Missing Room in many different performance spaces across the globe, and I can think of many other locations that would lend themselves extremely well to their imaginative illusions. This performance marked their UK premiere, and I for one think Lundahl & Seitl are names that we will be hearing a great deal more about in the future.