This installation is an intriguing two-fold body building exercise. It examines in a somewhat architecurally confronting way the parallel preoccupations and procedures of the architect and the medical scientist.

On entering this exhibition space I am immediately aware that I am entering a so-called dark space of the contemporary city. As the gallery name implies, it is a basement - best described as a crypt-like space; dark, closed, hidden and underground. It is also a recycled renewed space rescued from an otherwise probable fate of becoming a derelict city site - a ruin from the industrial city.

In contrast the idea of the Intensive Care Unit perhaps epitomises modernity: the light space - white, hygenic and sanitized. The gallery space in no way reflects the clear, cool, clean and pure space of the typical modernist building.

The ICU installation creates a space of fear and anxiety; not so much because of any associations with the so-called dark space but a fear and anxiety in response to modernity (particularly technological modernity). Like an Intensive Care Unit this is a highly observable space: constantly under surveillance.

ICU calls into crisis the pathologies of our post-war, universal and minimalising modernism - calling for an examination of our persistent architectural practices where the body in space is treated as an interference,
an undesirable foreign body, colonising and infecting the space like a virus. While the medical scientist attempts to repair the sick body by taking control and eliminating viruses, the architect will also often be pre-occupied
with removing any interference or contamination. Architecture is considered contaminated by interference from any unspecified sources such as people, furntiture and/or landscaping elements. These impurities represent the abject to architecture as most architectural documentation commissioned by the architect will confirm.

"I SEE YOU," drones the electronic voice-over, "..detect fault in sector Xx,Yy," as I innocuosly view the exhibit. The voice-over is the voice of Authority, echoing from the depths of some Big-Brother-Daddy mainframe. A building like a body must remain a closed system to maintain its health. Medical science and architecture share the same pre-occupation with perfection of form and function. This, too, is a selfish pursuit of architecture (self referential and without content). An infra-red motion detector serves as an electronic eye tracking and trapping my movement as an invader, a foreign body. Big Daddy is delivering a narrative which is relaying the coordinates of this viewer's position. The interface is haunting an absent structure. In this interactive exhibit it is not at the terminal as one would expect, especially so since the keyboard and screen are mounted on a pedestal which occupies a priveledged position within the space - centrally
placed and appearing as the focus of the installation. The interface has rather become omnipotent and out of the viewer's control.

The composition of a theatre-setting is completed by two large digiprint photographs, which are mounted on the wall, one either side of the terminal.

They are opposing but complimentary images from within the operating theatre, both with a strongly gothic quality.

The left hand image is a blood red body interior depicting some intestinal or other anatomical space. It resembles something between a dissected and an endoscopic view. An architectural object, a mobile pathology laboratory is exposed as a foreign body inhabiting the middle ground of this fantastic bodyscape of intestinal architecture.

The right hand panel is a close-up, a surgeon's view of the operating trolley. This image of sterility is rendered in cool greens and steely cold blues. There is also the unnerving glistening of surgical instruments and other stainless steel surfaces, as they catch the light from the bank of overhead lights. This image represents the immanence of the horrific moment of dissection.

Tour of ICU complete.

Making my way back to street level and out of view of the electronic eye and the authority of the voice I contemplate my experience. I believe that this installation shares the same theoretical site as the contemporary sci-fi horror movie. I cannot help but to recall the spectacular scene in Robocop, that moment of horror when cop Murphy's body is incorporated into the corporation - Murphy's body is transformed into the cyborgian body of Robocop under hyper-clinical and hyper-sanitised conditions and executed with military precision.

These are not scenes from some dislocated time or place, instead they are increasingly occuring within familiar settings of the everyday: the internalised and privatised, the light, bright and clean spaces of modernity.

© Rosemary Burne. 1996
MESH film/video/multimedia/art #10,MESH is published by Experimenta Media Arts