And the Birds Fell From the Sky

If you only see one monumental multi-media sensory-deprivation performance artwork this festival, this year, this lifetime, Il Pixel Rosso's And The Birds Fell From The Sky should be it. A mere fifteen minutes takes us from the real world to a dream and somewhere in between, everything communicated to us through the dense black goggles placed over our eyes and the headphones in our ears. Daylight seems unnatural. As we move through a world to which we are now blind, the world in the goggles reacts, and what starts as a mere vision turns into a story which has us responding to its every whim.

We travel in a car with four Faruq- a race painted to look like monochrome circus clowns who speak an impenetrable language, see dreams and visions; we smell the rain, the vodka, the lighter, the grass, we hear the birdsong, and we are asked- Are you sleeping through the best part of this journey?

We are given a keepsake. Mine was The Fool, The Tower and The Hanged Man. In Tarot cards, these point towards ignorance, a search for knowledge, and finally a flash of inspiration and truth. I don't know whether every visitor gets these same three cards, and I hope they don't, though they certainly would make sense to everyone who leaves the little room where the sunlight comes beaming back in.

It's a common problem when an onlooker tries to find meaning in artwork. Sometimes it's impenetrable, sometimes it simply isn't there, and sometimes it isn't there for a reason. With only a GCSE in art to back me up, I couldn't begin to say which this is. I do know that the kind of art which sends you blinking like a newborn back into the world can be powerful without a purpose.