The Quiet FACT Liverpool

It's hectic, its half term, in an effort to fill the time people are taking to the streets of Liverpool. Swelling the population, swelling the noise.

The hubbub is up.

To avoid this I'm travelling up Wood St, which is quieter in comparison. Just other people avoided the mainstream or having of fag break.

I'm on my way to FACT to see the Quiet, which promises to be a immersive installation which will recreate the still before the storm.

Or I hope it will as attempts to find more information just leads to a silent 404 page. I hope it is.

There it is in the foyer of FACT a strange combination of plywood and soft baby blue, erm stuff.

On the entrance there's a hefty bolt, it makes me hesitate. Is there someone locked inside a unknown stillness inside? Anyway the gallery assistant assures me I'm free to enter.

So I do, and like a deep breath, the silence is there, the stillness, the expectation that something will happen. Like a breath its gone and there I am in a room filled with that twilight that comes with a heavily overcasted day.

One where you can't tell were the light is coming from.hh

With a collection of tropical plants, lights and the sighing of a air conditioner. The muffled songs of the outside leak through from a distant world.

Though I feel I could stay I feel that my time here is fleeting. On exiting the installation I feel oddly upbeat. As if the installation has acted like a mental reset.

It's a slight experience but a affective one. Later I capture myself thinking about that space. Almost like a secret. I also think about that episode of the Avengers where a eccentric Army Major recreates a tropical jungle in his mansion.

Maybe because the both create hermetically sealed individual worlds.