Tim Spooner at Chisenhale Dance Space

22 Jan 13

Last week I filmed Tim Spooner's Subliming Furiously for Chisenhale Dance Space, my first encounter with his work: ethereal, funny and oddly moving. Tim placed microphones inside his mouth, on his airhose, on his neck, everywhere, and operated them from a mini sound desk strapped to his chest and covered with a lead bib. While the sounds - hums, fragments of speech, rhythmic teeth-chattering, disintigrating lists of scientific equipment - were created and manipulated, he remote controlled small, barely visible stage events across the dimly lit room. The idea was for the audience to listen and imagine the show itself taking place inside Tim's head. Originally it was going to be in complete blackness, aside from a few small flashlight happenings. Instead, he started the show in a warm glow that slowly faded to black over 17 minutes, allowing us for a brief time to see what the inside his head might look like, too: a fan blowing a spotlit curtain, a fluctuating orange square, a bucket of water, some vapor clouds, an illuminated owl. Beautiful, and utterly bonkers.