The ex-Festival of Brexit begins in Paisley – with an irritating whimper
“During the duration you are encouraged to think about your loved ones.” So intones, before About Us begins, a female voice from the shadows circling Paisley’s splendid gothic Abbey, presumably aiming in a single sentence to heal the bitter schismatic wounds of recent British political history. Alas, it’s the sort of platitudinous imperative more likely to prompt feelings of teeth-gnashing irritation than a warm fuzzy glow.
About Us is an outdoor, 25-minute-long, projection-mapping spectacular depicting the evolution of the cosmos from its pre-existence state to the present day, and a collaboration between 59 Productions, the Poetry Society and science organisation Stemettes. It’s also the inaugural production for Unboxed, the rebranded “Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” initiated by Theresa May in 2018 to celebrate “the creativity and innovation of the United Kingdom” following our departure from the EU, and greatly mocked at the time.
Helmed by Martin Green, who oversaw the 2012 Olympic ceremonies, Unboxed is now an eight-month programme featuring 10 large-scale public events, with the organisers evidently so keen to appear as inclusive and awe-inspiring as possible, nothing less than the universe itself will do as a starting subject. Everyone can see themselves in the stars, right?
To be fair, the Abbey (the outdoor canvas for the Paisley show; About Us will also tour to several other carefully chosen British towns) does indeed become a thing of wonder under 59 Productions’ high-tech visual alchemy, its buttresses and window arches eerily lit up by snaking lights, its ancient medieval walls seeming to liquify as images of darkness, chaos, fire, the first stars and the first amoebas dance and writhe across the stone, followed by dinosaurs and then mankind. Throughout, an outdoor choir delivers lofty Latinate choral harmonies, while a soundtrack from Nitin Sawhney mixes pattering percussion and the sound of water with sonorous ambient noise to ram home the enormity of it all.
Yet what, really, does it amount to? Beyond the slick visuals and (largely inaudible) fragments of poetry, there’s precious little artistic substance, and virtually no concrete science. For all the unqualified success of 2012, large-scale art by well-intentioned committee tends to fall victim to this sort of hollow creative blandishment, eschewing meaningful specificity for generic spectacle and empty slogans.
In 2016 Jeremy Deller showed what could be done with his astonishing Battle of the Somme commemoration which, in using thousands of volunteers across the country dressed as First World War soldiers, rejected a shock and awe approach for small moments of human intimacy. Who knows, the rest of Unboxed may well delight us with similar levels of creative ingenuity and thought, but for the moment, this opening statement of intent is not so much a bang as a whimper.
Until March 6 and then on tour. Tickets: free, see unboxed2022.uk
