- Chinese artist Zhang Ding's current Enter The Dragon exhibition at London's Institute Of Contemporary Arts is the setting for daily live performances by pairs of musicians operating in the more experimental sectors of electronic music. (The lineups were curated by Ding and staff from east London's NTS Radio.) Running for two weeks, the installation—described as a "mutating sound sculpture"—was built in direct reference to the final scene of the Bruce Lee film of the same name. In the scene, a showdown with the film's villain takes place in a mirror-covered room.
Walking into the ICA's transformed theatre space on Tuesday, October 20th was a disorientating experience. Light from darting strobes and seedy beams of pink and blue ricocheted off every visible surface, while the audience stood in the middle of it all, perplexed. On either side of them was a stage, each fronted by rotating, reflective sculptures. Berlin-based house experimentalist Heatsick and Lukid, a UK producer particularly gifted in coaxing beauty from the grit of distortion, occupied one stage each.
Often at exhibitions, the art can fall short of the lofty intentions the artists ascribe to it, but in Ding's case, where Enter The Dragon was intended as "a platform for co-operative improvisation, experimentation and self-reflection," this potential pitfall was sidestepped by placing the emphasis on the performances. These began with ten-minute segments from each of the acts. Lukid started by marshalling grainy ambience from his laptop and assorted bits of kit, before the attention turned to Heatsick, whose thick, glossy chords looped up from the synths in front of him. There was a nice contrast as their two sounds overlapped and clicked into place.
Programming rhythms live added an enjoyably chaotic approach to Heatsick's set, which felt at near-constant risk of falling out of time. The two moved back and forth like this, taking it in turns to raise the intensity. They joined forces for the closing stages, weaving Lukid's roughed-up breaks into Heatsick's increasingly loose drum patterns.
I was most aware of my surroundings during these overlapping periods, as this was when I and the rest of the audience would turn our gaze from one stage to the other. Whenever it was time to face the stage furthest from me, I'd be bombarded with flashes of light and patterns more abstract than I could make sense of fired from the revolving sculptures opposite. "Immersive" is a term too readily used these days when describing experiences, but given just how much was going on visually and sonically at any one time, it's hard to think of a better way to sum up Zhang Ding's creation on Tuesday night.