REACTOR – The Tetra Phase

You have one opportunity to make a difference

Castlefield Gallery in association with Contact present Reactor’s newly commissioned, site-specific project, The Tetra Phase at The Old Fire Station. The Tetra Phase, set in the disused historic building, will present an immersive journey into subjective experience. On each Saturday throughout October, groups of the public will venture into this disconnected environment, known only as ‘The Station’, to interact within an immersive installation. Working together at some points, but in opposition at others, the groups’ journeys will intersect as they locate their individual pathways through the constructed possibilities of this labyrinthine space.

Within The Tetra Phase, meaning is internal and objectivity an impossibility. Beyond the limitations of ‘true’ or ‘false’, all we know is that certain results follow inevitably from certain actions. Participants can book to attend the event only once, so there will be no opportunity to repeat the experience, or take advantage of a wider perspective. As in life, you only get one chance.

However, others will be watching. The omnipresent ‘eye in the sky’, created by a network of CCTV cameras, forms the only position from which a privileged perspective on the event is possible. But who is doing the watching? And for what purpose?

This newly commissioned site-specific project further explores Reactor’s interest in ‘the audience as artwork’. Interpersonal and group dynamics will come to the fore, as participants attempt to reconcile their subjective experiences, and the event expands beyond the confines of ‘The Station’.

The project is a commission for Castlefield Gallery in association with Contact and has been financially supported by Arts Council England, Awards for All and with kind support from Britannia Hotels.

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MORE ON REACTOR:

Reactor ( www.reactorweb.com) is a Nottingham and Manchester based artist group who produce one-off projects tailored to specific contexts. Over recent years Reactor has delivered complex projects such as Total GHAOS, Ivan’s Dogs and Destination: Geodecity, and has also been commissioned by the Angel Row Gallery, Quad, Sideshow, the NOW Festival and LIFT to produce a range of off-site projects, exploring alternative sites, structures and forms of audience engagement. Future commissions will include work for the Donau Festival in Austria and the Isaac Newton Art Trust in Sussex.

Through ongoing research into belief systems and their place in collective action and community, Reactor explores the ways in which culture and common beliefs hold together social groups and communities. This focus is reflected in the projects it delivers, producing complex environments involving intertwined paths; with audiences split to take different routes through the work. Reactor seeks to transcend the usual parameters of an ‘art exhibition’; employing an extensive and lateral development of the possibilities of what the work can be, encouraging the event to spill out from its initial structure into an ‘expanded field’ of activity.

“Reactor has been at the forefront of collaborative working and situational aesthetics, gaining increasing national recognition for its unusual and provocative strategies for critically engaging audiences. The group’s use of installation as a space of communication in which reflexive and interactive relationships are formed with its audience has been innovative in concept and fearless in execution.” Kathy Fawcett, The City Gallery – Leicester

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Contact’s investment in Reactor is part of a wider commitment to exciting and new work by young artists whose work is influenced by the spaces in which they create and present.

Castlefield Gallery is supported by Arts Council England with Lottery funding.