The real goal of these shows is you
I didn’t take DMT, the powerful psychedelic molecule found in ayahuasca that is said to mimic near-death experiences, but I was at Crossrail Place. It wasn’t good. There I was in early spring: over-caffeinated, under-slept and trapped in Canary Wharf’s Blade Runner complex of skyscrapers, investment firms and novelty food trucks, and I couldn’t find my way. So I was a little worried when I returned recently in search of Illusionaries, an “experiential arts centre in the vibrant centre of London”. If through The vibrant centre of London You mean the second floor of a mall? Well, here we are.
Opened over a year ago, Illusionaries is one of numerous ‘immersive’ art galleries that have become ubiquitous in the commercial interstitial zones of major capital cities. The term ‘immersive’ has become marketing slang, but today it mainly refers to projection-based exhibitions that rely heavily on digital technologies such as projection mapping, virtual and augmented reality, CGI and surround sound, and promise to dissolve the boundaries between artwork and audience. The immersive installation is a fairly broad, secular church, encompassing site-specific new media works by contemporary digital artists and collectives such as the Japanese group TeamLab and blockbuster animated retrospectives of living or deceased masters, with the odd Instagram-centric balloon museum thrown in for good measure. ‘Immersion’ is often taken quite literally, with the audience being immersed in the work through its underFusion in spectacular, digital representations of sound and image. This is not a new idea, of course – from early cave art and sacred rituals to panoramas, magic lantern projections, light shows and expanded cinema, art has found many tactics to confuse the relationship between viewer and artwork – although this contemporary variant relies primarily on seeing itself as pioneering.
The third exhibition of Illusionaries, Entheon: A Sanctuary of Visionary Artis touted as a groundbreaking exploration of “consciousness, perception, and the human mind.” Although no original artwork is on display, another common motif of the “immersive” installation, the kaleidoscopic image bath, runs through works by contemporary American psychedelic artists Alex and Allyson Grey. Fans of the post-metal band TOOL will be familiar with their brand of anatomical psychedelia, as will anyone who has ever browsed through a few books in a New Age bookstore. Their work has acquired a large and passionate following and I’m not here to debate its aesthetic merit; watch Alex Grey’s charming TED talk “Cosmic Creativity” and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
Once you’ve entered through the futuristic silver doors, opened a can of CBD (available at reception) and traversed the mirrored corridor with its giant Egyptian heads, you’re all but ready to “fathom hell and float like an angel.” That is, if you can actually get into the rooms—who knew the doors of perception were so hard to open? Once inside, you’ll be treated to brightly colored projections of ever-changing fractals and molecular shape constants, religious and spiritual iconography (“Explore the Creator Within”), and writhing hieroglyphs from Allyson Gray’s Secret codea 20-character alphabet she came up with during an LSD trip in the early 1970s. Dazzling and outrageously garish anatomical drawings depicting stages of life and ego death (including a wildly triggering image of a baby’s head protruding from a giant neon-pink vagina) unfold in a mirrored chamber whose most obvious precursor is Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Roomsfirst performed in 1965. And like Kusama’s hugely popular installations, your image is reflected in endless mirror configurations, including on someone else’s camera phone. Under these conditions, it’s impossible to erase yourself.
Illusionaries claims that it focuses on creating “carefully selected experiences” rather than “adapting existing paintings.” Aside from the fact that most of these works Are digital reproductions of oil and acrylic paintings. In 1985, after taking MDMA for the first time, the Greys began creating their Holy Mirrors Series of 21 life-size paintings of the human body and its psychic and spiritual energy channels. You can view these works on site at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, her nondenominational church in upstate New York, which is funded by independent donors, including soap opera heir David Bronner.
In the third room, I walk carefully across a gravel floor in a quiet garden, stretch out on a beanbag and distance myself from Church tower heada four-meter-high 3D sculpture of a giant head that provides the canvas for an ongoing spiritual Sound and light of geometric shapes and religious figures. Lulled by the steady flow of moving images and an intoxicating soundscape of ambient trance, I am less aware of the technology, material or meaning than of the overall architecture of the show and my place in it. I snap pictures with my phone and am reminded of Kyle Chayka’s definition of “ambient television.” Building on Brian Eno’s coining of the term “ambient music” on the 1978 sleeve notes to Ambient 1: Music for airportsChayka uses ambience to describe the unfocused flow of experience when watching the Netflix series Emily in Paris (2020) – which, incidentally, is credited with sparking a resurgence in immersive shows due to its prominent scene in the Atelier des Lumières. Slow, soothing, and “too preordained to be dramatic,” this pleasantly numbing experience offers just enough momentum to keep you entertained, but is easy to turn off when you move back to other technologies.
So if I am not looking at the painting itself, but at an animated projection of the painting that can easily be reproduced in any number of other locations (these exhibitions are almost always traveling), what exactly do these environments offer? It is something that Entheonwith its New Age veneer of spiritual contemplation and vague appeal to therapeutic self-discovery, is more honest than most. The real target of these shows, I’m beginning to realize, is you.
Independently funded, immersive digital art galleries are financed through ticket sales rather than individual works, and rely heavily on social media for marketing. These spaces are purposefully designed to be shared online, turning visitors into “micro-influencers and brand ambassadors,” as art historian Kate Mondloch puts it in her article on Van Gogh: The immersive experience (2017–). These timed entry shows are often described as accessible because they offer participatory and interactive elements, but they are almost always prohibitively expensive (expect to pay £20–30 for 40 minutes). EntheonChildren under the age of twelve are not allowed, which is not exactly a welcoming gesture but is probably wise considering the psychedelic corpses on display.
The obvious popularity of immersive art points to broader consumer trends: This is both the widely documented desire for “experience” rather than product and the trend towards self-help in troubled times. With names like Frameless And BorderlessImmersive digital art galleries rely heavily on emancipatory metaphors, evoking not only the overcoming of formal boundaries—exhibiting “art” in ways that supposedly transcend the constraints of canvas or frame—but also institutional boundaries. While they are not exactly fraudulent enterprises, they operate clearly outside the traditional art establishment, bypassing the middlemen of curators, art historians, and restorers. These networks, called “art stacks” in the Serpentine Galleries’ 2020 report on art and high technologies, represent a break from the art world’s fusty conventions, but also find the art industry where the rest of Western society is: simplified, streamlined, collapsed by technology.
Is this all just a distorted reflection of technology-driven transcendence, or an opportunity to reinvent the art museum by finding spectacular, sensual and accessible ways to diversify a dwindling visitor base? This is evident in the snaking lines outside the museum. Frameless in London’s Marble Arch and the healthy Friday morning rainbow crowd for Entheon that the appetite for experiential art is definitely there. But whether immersive digital art galleries will last is unclear — as for-profit businesses dependent on tourist traffic and ticket sales, they are closely intertwined with the whims of the market. Indeed, in August last year, Canadian company Lighthouse Immersive, known for its immersive Van Gogh, Kahlo and Monet exhibitions, filed for bankruptcy in the US — leaving investors elsewhere in a bind. The friction between the liberating and therapeutic premise of such shows and their blatant consumerism and tech industry patronage can make them a bitter pill to swallow. Especially when the pill promises to make you bigger or smaller. Like a distorting mirror, these immersive shows reflect an image of ourselves and our desires: they replace transcendence with predictable emotional engagement and a weak imitation of the sublime. If only it were that simple.
Sophia Satchell-Baeza is a film scholar, art critic and programmer
