The Echo Show
Until December 21; Tramway

Until last week the future of Tramway 2 looked shaky; there was serious talk of turning the gallery space into a prop-making workshop for Scottish Ballet, despite the venue’s unique character and international renown. Glasgow’s tight-knit arts community was having none of it, however, and buckling under the strain of mass-revolt and home-made t-shirts, the high-heid yins appear to have beaten a retreat.

With the reverberations of dissent still ringing in our ears, The Echo Show has set up camp in the disputed territory. The Danish artist-curator duo Søren Andreasen and Lars Bang Larsen claim to “explore the basic conditions of art and exhibition making today”, and say that “echoing signifies a time and space where many discourses unfold and mumble amongst each other.” There is, certainly, a lot of mumbling.

Most the artworks in the group show literally – and metaphorically – talk to themselves, and navigating the room is like picking your way through Bedlam, trying to figure out who is saying what and whether anyone is in fact addressing you. Two Lebanese artists do succeed in holding your attention with the 42 minute documentary, The Lost Film. We follow the paranoid wanderings of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joeige as they search The Yemen for their stolen film, moving deeper towards uncertainty and discomfort, and finally learning with bitter sweetness that the only parts of their reel saved for posterity are the sections removed at source by the Lebanese censors.

Susan Philipsz’s Sunset Song is a pair of facing freestanding loudspeakers from which emanates a plaintive duet, wafting across the gallery floor. The mood is wistful, but somewhat wasted in the gallery context, as Philipsz’s work really makes its impact on unsuspecting members of the public such as those in a Ljubljana underpass who were treated to a crooned version of the Internationale in 2000. More in that vein is the series of echoing voices and whistles which spring from nowhere as you walk round the gallery, like the mating calls of unseen birds.

Rasmus Knud and Søren Andreasen’s Earworld/Volume 01-17 baffles with a car-boot selection of vinyl nothingness, and Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann’s Films On The Society Liberated From Work offers yet more earphone confusion along with an 18-page handout guaranteed to make even the most seasoned gallery-goer balk. Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann and Grupo de Arte Callejero have made a damning map of Buenos Aires which exposes poverty, state terrorism and US complicity, which will be rewarding to read if you know Spanish.

The physical prowess of Tramway 2 is amply demonstrated by the enormously tall Camilla Løw mobile dangling from the rafters, and by the inclusion of an entire car without detriment to the rest of the space (I remember, by contrast, the tense faces of the Dean Gallery staff when trying to accommodate Lee Miller’s jeep two years ago). There is no doubt that Tramway 2 is an invaluable space for Scotland, but it is definitely at its best when not talking to itself.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 30.11.03