Wang Du: The Space-Time Tunnel
Until September 3; Baltic, Gateshead

The moment you step out of the lift at Baltic you're faced with a sight straight out of a sci-fi adventure. A pyramid of steps leads to the rusty opening of a tunnel, embedded high up in the wall. Its curving surfaces of grungy wire mesh are lined with crumpled, yellowing newspaper, and 66 television screens. This is the first UK solo show of Chinese artist Wang Du.

It’s like the neglected ruin of a future age, but on examination, there’s nothing futuristic about the tunnel’s component parts. The cathode-ray televisions are already approaching obsolescence. The newspapers have seen better days. The rusty walls and creaking floor of the claustrophobic space could easily date back to the second world war.

But the media babble, coming at you from all sides, is from right now. Shopping channels from Australia, news in London, pop music in Tunisia, children’s programmes in Paris; they’re all fed live into the stomach of this creaking monster, fighting with each other to be heard.

You know you flick through programmes like these on a regular basis. But collectively, they are a clammering Tower of Babel, already toppled and refusing to die. It’s hopeless trying to make sense of individual voices or newspaper headlines, and anyway, you can’t hang around. People queue behind you, shunting you deeper into the winding metal tube.

The most frightening thing about this experience is that it’s not frightening. For something which should be a futuristic nightmare, it feels all too familiar. The pressing cacophony of infotainment simultaneously attracts and repels as it does wherever you go – a multitude of electronic voices competing for your attention in the street, in the pub, in the airport and even in the gallery.

After winding round and sloping up and down, light appears at the end of the tunnel. With nary a whisper of ladies removing high-heeled shoes, a metal chute comes into view, with a gradient not to be sneezed at. Disoriented, you’re left with no choice but to allow the space-time monster to spit you out at full tilt.

With an unceremonious bump you find yourself in the centre of an empty room, on your bottom and legs akimbo. You scramble to your feet, knowing that any attempt to recover your dignity in the presence of the bored gallery attendant is futile. What just happened? You’re not sure. You were in the past of the future, and it’s now.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 04.06.06