ARTISTS TALKING

A voice sounds over the Tannoy: “Place the hood over your head, pick up the boiler suit, and a supervisor will take you to your cell.” I stumble through a dimly lit corridor into a dusty jail cell where I remove the hood, and put on the boiler suit. After twenty minutes of waiting I am led away with four others to a room where we are met by a large man wearing a balaclava and aviator shades. “This is not like the outside world,” we are told. If you do well you will go up ... if you do badly you will go down.”

Lined up against a wall our details are taken, and we are assigned numbers: I am number twenty-nine. We are taken to a room where I have to lead the group in a task. I do badly. Blindfolded I am taken down into the dark recesses of the building, and sat on a chair. Ominous music is played to me which subtly transforms into a morose power ballad: “I am a prisoner ... of your eyes,” the songstress exclaims. Suddenly a hand clasps my shoulder, and I am led away, further into the blackness, engulfed by the dead smell of the derelict fire station.

I can hear voices softly chattering around my head, my blindfold is removed and the rest of my team greets me wearing party hats. “Are you having fun?” they ask me constantly. Bearing strange fixed grins, they force feed me cake and lemonade. This is by far the most unsettling experience of the whole project as I wonder what the consequences of not having enough fun may be. Over the next hour we are led upwards and downwards, facing a bewildering array of masonic and militaristic ritual, which engender a deep sense of paranoia. I am taken aside and told I have done well, and must nominate a person within my team who has held us back. I suspect other members of my team have been asked to do the same.

Finally we are taken to a candlelit room on the top floor, where we stand around a chalk pentangle facing an altar. “You are coming to the end of your time here, only four of you will be leaving³ One of you will remain,” we are told. Number twenty-eight is accosted and removed from the room, an air of guilt is palpable. After the recitation of a prayer, we are ejected from the building out on to a damp Manchester side street. Chatting in the cosy comfort of the Bull Tavern afterwards a sense of mistrust remains amongst us. It would seem the Tetra Phase doesn’t let you go that easily.