Public View 4: Speed of life
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Your support makes all the difference.I'm sitting in the cafe of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, having zoomed through "Speed". Twentieth-century art-works fill both floors. And although I didn't look at every object or read each sign, it's all been a bit much. I've bought a bottle of mineral water, and just pouring the sparkling liquid into the glass restores me.
There are a few slow pieces. A painting by Matisse of the instrument panels of his car and the view through its windscreen along the Villacoulby Road in 1917. Was it parked, or trundling along the avenue? It doesn't matter, it's slow by modern standards. Close by is a quote saying something about Futurism replacing Christianity with a new morality, one which provided a new God: speed. And a new evil: slowness. Sip.
Lots of fast cars. Like the one in Roy Lichtenstein's comic-strip painting. The driver accelerates so that his glamorous passenger is pressed back against her seat, to his evident satisfaction. Even faster is Siobhan Habaska's Mule. The smooth, aerodynamic sports-car shell hugs the gallery floor. Fur emerges from under the bonnet, the wheel space and what might be the petrol tank, as do thunderclaps and deep roars. It's a bit of an animal this car, and I'm glad to be at safe distance from it. Sip.
The show is dominated by work which subverts the idea that fast is good. A painting of a crashed car from as early as 1953. A mounted budgie with wings outspread, the dead bird stuffed with shredded pages from JG Ballard's Crash. And Paul Ramirez-Jonas's monumental Apollo XI moon landing installation ... The artist has taken the original recordings of messages sent between the earth and the moon and re-recorded them in a relatively primitive way - as a groove into wax. The end wall of the upstairs gallery is covered by shelves supporting nine-inch-long green wax cylinders - hundreds of them - each of which has a groove carrying about a minute of recorded time. There is a book with transcriptions of the messages in it. I noted: "Tranquillity Base this is Houston. Can you give us some idea on how you're progressing on the PLSS doffing and preparation for DEPRESS?"
Earth to moon and back. Just about the longest journey ever made by man. The time spent on the moon is made manifest, if in a weird way. And speed equals distance over time. Huge distance divided by daft time. What speed does that give? Sippity sip.
Somewhere in the gallery, it says: "Every year, the industrial system uses as much fossil fuel as the earth has stored up in a million years. Within a second, in geological terms, the planet's resources are about to vanish." My glass is empty. There's still some water left in the bottle, but I leave it and return to the show's piece de resistance.
Rodney Graham's School of Velocity consists of a piano attached to computer equipment, and 24 books each containing 60 pages of sheet music that are spread over two simple ash tables. An open book shows why so many are needed for one piece of music - there is a single note on the ruled and barred page.
The artist has taken a piano solo devised as a training exercise for virtuosi and slowed it down by applying a version of Galileo's law of Free-Fall. His reasons for doing this are there to be read about, but the net effect is that it takes 24 hours to play this solo. "Plink." The pace rather suits me ... Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are on the moon. Buzz is staring dubiously at his moon buggy - a toboggan with lashings of grey felt, a clump of beeswax and a torch. Armstrong is sitting at a grand piano. "Plonk."
Buzz has a sackful of metronomes which he's supposed to distribute around the Lake of Tranquillity. He may not have forgotten the point of their mission (he has), but he certainly has forgotten the point of this experiment. "Plink." Is he supposed to set the metronomes at a fraction of the speed of the moon's rotation? Or the speed of Ol' Man River, as it just keeps on rolling down through Missouri-Mississippi flatlands? "Plunk."
"Do you know what's goin' on?"
"You hum it Buzz, I'll play it."
"We are not reading you, Neil. Buzz? Buzz? This is Houston. Do you read?"
On the way out, I pass On Kawara's date painting. A black canvas with white letters: 7 May, 1991. One day at a time. I wouldn't argue with that.
Speed: Whitechapel, E1 (0171 522 7878), to 22 November.
'Personal Delivery', Duncan McLaren's book on contemporary art, is out now from Quartet (pounds 12).
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