Today’s Last Chance To See is about a video installation at The Wapping Project by Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson. You can see it until 12 February 2005.
The Wapping Project is a disused pumping station and has a lot of the original pumping equipment still left inside, so it’s a fantastic space to be in in it’s own right. Very atmospheric and probably the most desirable place I’ve seen for an apartment (if you could afford a 10,000 sq ft bungalow in Wapping riverside with 50ft ceilings).
Anyway the installation looks like an enormous piece of lab equipment with a large cube just above head height. The cube is showing four different views of the same thing: an impressionistic view of Victorian scientists using their eyes and primitive equipment to try to understand the natural phenomena they were seeing in the skies.
It’s really cool. I would have loved it when I was 13 and I loved it last night. Great visuals, nice sounds and a great space to show it in.