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Interrogation Techniques: Making Art about Fear Tts takes the form of a guided minibus tour of the audience's home city. After meeting at a designated spot, audience members undergo a series of simulated 'security checks', and in quick succession are instructed to sign indemnity forms; are allocated a seat number and portable audio gear; pledge an oath of allegiance to a mythical figure; and are finally settled into their seats. Each 'new recruit' wears headphones, and the tts bus is fitted with a big screen. pvi performer, Tour Guide One, who begins his commentary as the bus pulls out into the night, seems to only just fit into his tiny pair of red Speedos. by May 1, 2005 From this point on, tts is much more than a new media performance event: it's a surreal, saturated experience, Each route takes in that city's iconic tourist sites, and the tour is tailored to themes specific to its history. pvi's Kelli McClusky explains, “In Sydney we looked at bushfires, and then it became about generating fear through fire and flammability. In Melbourne we worked in the 1800s tag of 'Smellbourne', from problems with sanitation, and the theme became bio-terrorism, and disease. In Adelaide we're looking at its Jeckyl and Hyde personality, [the polarity] between its prim and proper-ness, and a dark underbelly.” Instead of beautiful must-sees, tourist sites are rendered ugly by a commentary that describes each place as a deformed body part - Federation Square, for example, becomes an acne-scarred face, Crown Casino, is “the pleasure spot”, a zinging gaudy clitoris. Instead of architectural details, tour guides recite actual details about each location's surveillance and security measures. In describing the city as a body, pvi borrowed from the vocabulary of Operation Shock and Awe. Kelli notes that the Coalition employed metaphors such as “taking out arteries”. While the effect of this was to obscure the human consequences of war, when appropriated by pvi the result is an unavoidably gruesome and corporeal experience. Kelli describes the character of Tour Guide One - the hysterical, yet ultimately harmless host of the tour - as a “clichéd 'smiling assassin'. He never stops smiling throughout his delivery.” He provides in-transit entertainment, laughing mercilessly to detailed accounts of deaths by bio-terrorism. While I assumed this was a crude psychological sketch of a jihadist, high on the effects of a spot of nerve gassing, these accounts are actually drawn from the Hollywood screenplay for Outbreak. It's a subtle point to draw: just exactly who is 'entertained' by terrorism? Kelli says that Tour Guide One represents fear and terror. He is juxtaposed with the on-screen Tour Guide Two, who issues - and follows - calm and meticulous instructions as he prepares for a nebulous, inevitable 'threat'. Tour Guide Two represents safety and security. As each is pushed to their extreme, they end up sounding very similar. Tts then, deals essentially with cultures of fear - as they are generated, experienced, and to what purpose they are manipulated. Strapped in, headphones on, stuck in Friday night football traffic and immersed in compulsive, sometimes repulsive visuals it was all enough to make this recruit feel, well, terrorised (in a black-humoured, cat plays with mouse kind of way). But is producing fear an effective method of critiquing it? Kelli says, “It would have been quite easy to do something along the line of political satire.” This is certainly the perspective that some of pvi's promotional material takes, remixing government messages so that 'every piece of paranoia helps'. Overall, however pvi opted for a more difficult task: “We didn't want it to be easy, we found it really hard to grapple with the concept of terrorism and fear as a means of social control. There are no easy answers. We couldn't make a work that said this is bad, and this is good, we wanted to challenge the audience.” So tts raises the anxiety levels of its audience bit by bit, ultimately making them complicit in the action. Kelli points to the incident where a passenger is 'disappeared' from the bus, as the most horrifying moment for her. Half the audience get off the bus and follow pvi's 'victim' around a corner, out of sight of the remaining passengers. There they are invited to pose with their thumbs up next to the hooded captive (to take an Abu Ghraib style photo). Kelli says, “This is treated with frivolity at the time, but there's an uneasy tension - 'should we be laughing?' People respond to this very differently, some people refuse to be photographed, others strangle that person and stick their knee in.” Immediately following this incident the image is transferred from digital camera to the bus's screen. Kelli explains, “ it's as if to say: 'you can't get away with that. It may have been done in a dark alley, but now every one can see.” This is one of many points where tts treads a fine line, between distasteful references, and provocation. But in a world where disturbing images have lost much of their impact, pvi wanted to explore “What do you make of those photographs? Do they just wash over us? Do we feel like taking any responsibility?” “I still don't know if it's right to make work like that,” Kelli continues, “we really cringe when we're doing this, this isn't a nice place to visit.” Tts is both about being part of a group - the simulated terrorist cell - and being isolated within that group. 'Recruits' become very submissive. On the Melbourne leg, people walk through Federation Square alone and are gently commanded over their headphones to strike a series of poses. It's easier to do them than not, an unsettling realisation. The use of headphones to isolate people was adopted after the first tts run in Perth. “We found that when we did it without the headphones, a pack mentality grew up in the bus. It was a way they could escape, or deny, to turn to each other. So we forced that concentration.” It's impossible to turn to a mate, and say “how are you coping?” instead you just have to cope. Similarly, it's not possible to escape by turning your attention to 'normal' life beyond the bus window. A red-faced tracksuit clad character called the Running Man tails the bus its entire distance. As Kelli describes, “He runs a mini-marathon! He literally runs after the bus for the duration of the show, he has a very strong presence in the work, he's chasing, and never able to keep up with the bus … we hear his breathing, but he can't get a word in.” And even if you manage to ignore Running Man, it's no 'normal' Friday night out there. In the inner city I wistfully watched a crowd drink at an outdoor exhibition opening. Then with a jolt I realised that above them screened a giant projection of a twitching blotched face, the same image that accompanied the in-transit bio-terror inspired 'entertainment'. Kelli says audience members have responded strongly, and very differently to tts. “People either really get it, and they're really engaged, or they kind of freeze and resent being put through that.” In no way did I resent being privy to what is at times an intelligent and brave work. But in trying to make a complex work about something so complex, tts ends up very muddled. Generating and playing with anxieties proves, in the end, only to distract from their important undertaking: to interrogate the politics of fear. Jane Litchfield is a Melbourne-based artist.
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