Tim Etchells: ‘Vacuum Days’
Review by Harun Morrison
’Vacuum Days’ by Tim Etchells., is a book comprised of notices for a series of fictional events running across 2011. The book is structured by allocating a notice per page, with each page titled by a date in chronological order. January 3 2011 promises, ‘ALL NIGHT FIGHT NIGHT / People With No Dignity vs People With No Hope / Men With No Trousers vs Women With No Chance.’ March 20 2011 serves, ‘Cruel & Usual Punishment plus MORONIC BEER TENT & ‘Donkey Meat Sandwiches’ and for December 15 2011, ‘A FIGHT STAGED BETWEEN A UNICORN & A PREDATOR DRONE.’
The bald pronouncement of events, the willfully bland typography evocative of English tabloid headlines, the repetitively nonchalant delivery. . . becomes a cascade of bruising satire not only of a culture saturated by commercially driven media, but of us; a ravenous mob with an insatiable vampiric appetite for new experiences, regardless of the politics of their production.
The palpable determination of these texts to catalogue all conceivable combinations of horror gives ‘Vacuum Days’ a manic, encyclopedic fervour. This is counterbalanced by a rooted connection to the rich tradition of English social satire, a quality evident not only in the scenarios, but the names, the send up of politicians and how snuggly the work fits alongside the likes of Hogarth and Swift, while bringing to life an alternate culture of Victorian traveling circus shows and faded music hall acts.
Considering Etchells’ on-going and past work in performance, especially work for the stage, ‘Vacuum Days’ can be seen in the context of a series of unrealised scripts. Scripts in fact, that we might hope would never be performed but, if they were, that we might secretly desire to attend. The text as substitute for the performance itself neatly echoes the proclamations of a generation of ‘60s conceptual artists: a key difference being Etchells rejects the elegance of the works of Weiner, Kosuth et al.
By taking cues and references from very current popular culture, the nature of news and journalism itself is problematized, exploring the grey area between the headline relaying the news as opposed to generating it, or exacerbating a situation, in order to create more news. This makes the prophetic aspect of the work all the more startling, nightmarishly what in 2011 was bizarre fiction achieves greater likelihood as time passes; after all ‘Donkey Meat Sandwiches’ are only a canter away from horsemeat.
Rather than considering ‘Vacuum Days’ in a prophetic light - which can only be ultimately depressing and disempowering - it is best considered an accurate depiction of a potential future. One to which we have been granted premature access. There is still time for alternate scripts to be written that will take us away from the destination that Etchells suggests we are hurtling towards.
