Passage: an Immersive Instalation

East-London gallery, restaurant and performance space The Wapping Project is hosting as of the 24th of January a very interesting project named PASSAGE. The audiovisual immersive installation was first staged in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Milan in April 2012 and has now landed at the Boiler House in one of London’s most interesting art venues.

PASSAGE, projected on two screens slung adjacent to each other, is a collaboration between Jules Wright, director of The Wapping Project and photographer Thomas Zanon-Larcher. A tightly constructed thriller marrying stills and moving image together, PASSAGE is inspired by key cinematic moments, and explores the point where film, realism and installation blur to form a new and disconcerting reality. It was shot on location in Cambridge, London, Paris, Vienna, Trieste, Milan, and the Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland. It draws knowingly on cultural and social references, most of which will be spotted by the culturally trained eye.

The journey starts in Cambridge, while the opening drive through a seemingly interminable tunnel recalls the tension of Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS and the astute viewer will certainly spot a Peugeot in Paris, a red coat in Venice and a famous wheel in Vienna. Setting the scene, the entrance to The Wapping Project’s Boiler House has been transformed with a broken neon sign flickering above a weather worn poster and just within ear shot the faint hum of cars and the hiss of rain. Inside black and white images of Odeon cinemas shot in the late 1930’s by John Maltby. The route however leads the viewer to a room in which evidence, of victim and pursuer, lay abandoned on cold steel tables. The score is composed by Billy Cowie.

PASSAGE is running from the 24th of January until the 10th March 2013.