The Spacehogger takes the form of a triangular wooden slab bearing a simple alarm based device and an FM transmitter with a small built-in microphone, literally designed to hog space and relay the evidence to an radio receiver with audio recorder. When it is fully armed, any attempts at relocation activate a failsafe: a 120dB alarm tone, dissuading people from tampering with it or moving it.

[The Spacehoggers DVD is now online courtesy of Archive.org - Sal]

The alarm can be sensitivised to many physical interferences by usage of mercury based vibration sensors, distance sensors, or contact points resting on an existing conductive surface within the gallery space. In the case of the latter contact point method, it actively engages with the space in which it subsists, seeming the most attractive technique as it literally becomes paradoxically reliant on the architecture, unlike the other methods that leave the artwork detached from the space. Furthermore, it is far more economical to build an inverted transistorised circuit exploiting metal surfaces already present in the space.

So this became my preferred method, bearing in mind the fact that reclaiming these Spacehoggers after sneaky installation in galleries would most likely be unfeasible. After the abandonment it is imperative that disassociation with the artwork is executed as quickly as possible, not only due to the act's possibly perilous consequences, but also to avoid becoming entangled as a prime character in the exploit, shifting the attention away from the gallerycrashing itself. So the device is sacrificed to the whims of the curators, and any strategic decisions they take as a result of the gallerycrashing become artistic offshoots: candid performance art instigated at the induction of a Spacehogger.

I seek to discredit the elitism rife not only in large established city galleries, but also in prim provincial galleries where doors (and minds) are closed to alternative or progressive artforms- much in a similar sentiment to JJ Xi and Cai Yuan in their 'Two Artists Open Fire' where they dress in mafia costumes and fire shots with fake pistols around a Royal Academy exhibition. "The reference to the mafia gave a direct allusion to the closed world of art in the establishment" [1]. Meanwhile, my method has no levity or perceptible performance absurdity to evoke any endearment to its targets, but on the other hand I do hope absurdity will be generated through the curators' inept attempts to disarm the Spacehogger, hence the foolishness of their actions will prove instrumental in my success at discrediting their elitist posturings.

The artwork shouldn't rest upon the hogger's hardware or its design, the attention should be shifted onto the manner in which the curators deal with the alien device. Galleries are perhaps the only places other than amusement parks where reality and fiction officially intersect, thus enabling even the most unremarkable gesture carried out within the space to undergo comfortable artistic transitions. Beneath this safe sugar coating of superficiality, there lurk real threats that could hinder any interventionist efforts.

Gallerycrashing by its very nature is invasive, possessing the potential to stir up allsorts of ugly situations- so to counterbalance this I attempted to behave in the most unintimidating way possible: camply (acknowledging the widespread popularity of camp comic TV characters, eg. Frank Spencer; "ooo Betty" [Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em]). However, this theory proved to be quite misplaced in practice where I was instantly seized prior to any Spacehogger touchdown; the curator became more enraged in tandem with my increasing feyness, possibly also contributing to the encountered failures of communication.

In Bishop's Stortford's Waytemore Gallery (comprising of the pomp that is Florence Walk) I attempted to persuade the curator/manager (Svetlana; a fake blond uppity, hugely bitchy European woman whom I had been keeping under surveillance for a few months prior to the gallerycrashing) to examine a "new piece of artwork", but was met by hostility. As I placed it over the metal tract to quietly arm the alarm, the curator's stiletto clad foot kept kicking it away forcefully, preventing the installation from occurring. An hour later I returned with more bravura to place the Spacehogger at lightening speed, but this was an even worse disaster, as I'll explain later.

Originally the plan was to arm the Spacehogger, gauge the curators thoughts on its aesthetic appeal, before hastily exiting with "ok, thanks, bye", leaving the Spacehogger behind to bind with the space. Since it relies on existing metal conductors in the space to electronically/audiophonically imprison itself, the gallery's very design proves to be devisive for the gallery's own injury (inflicted to the administrative ordering of works, upsetting the hegemony). The notion of a perma-installation harks back to the days of yore when the word 'installation' referred typically to a non-artistic fixed article bonded to the surrounding environment in some way, as an infrastructure; when the Tate Modern was itself a huge permanent installation: the Bankside Power Station.

"As far back as Roman times, private houses were being built (...) designed to be heated from a central fireplace. (...) Heating systems as we know them today did not come into use until many years later. Even then, they were mainly confined to large buildings (...). The modern domestic piped central heating system is purely a scaled down and simplified version of the former large type of installation" (Crabtree, 1980: 6)

Deliberately regressive usage of the word 'installation' is not merely whimsy; but an attempt to brush away the alternative new meanings reattributed to it over the years, therefore recapturing the purest sense of the word; as a long term addition to the architecture as opposed to the ephemeral modern sense. Whereas the gallerycrashing interventionist work imparts an addition to the environment, it simultaneously subtracts valuable gallery space. This dichotomy is frequently toyed with and pushed to the forefront in contemporary interventionism, such as in Steve Lambert's dalliance with 'shopdropping' (a distant cousin of gallerycrashing?) where art is inserted in places of retail- in Lambert's case, supermarkets.

"An alternate strategy employed by interventionist art is the insertion of a 'mute' or 'impotent' commodity- a commodity whose non-functionality rejects or halts the flow of signification/consumption. For instance, Steve Lambert's ultra-genericised cereal boxes employ the language of advertising to create a meta-commodity. Devoid of purpose or motive, Lambert's art works like an insect's abandoned carapace, pointing out the absence of what was." [Shopdropping]

Interventionist artists have also been known to apply even more corporeal subtractive or additive processes upon environments, such as artist-cum-architect Gordon Matta-Clark who made subtractive "'building cuts' in disused structures" (Lee, 1999: iv), essentially slicing holes into old buildings earmarked for demolition; forced ventilation, imposing ultra-modernist ideas on archaic buildings nearing death.

Whilst the "Space Invaders" project spearheaded by a French street artist who wishes to remain anonymous, involves tagging emblems of pixellated spacecraft from the arcade game of the same name in public places- much like a graffiti tagger except neater and subtler, therefore limiting any subtractive aesthetic debasement frequently incurred by traditionally gaudier graffiti attributed to social decline.

As for the Spacehoggers, their visual impact can be tweaked to the highly unpleasant (subtractive aesthetic discord) or camouflaged to harmonise with the space. For instance, it can be covered in old syringes, swearwords, ammonia, flying saucers, onions, Arabic text, dead mice and a transparent box of spiders, playing on many people's fears, phobias and also affecting both sight and smell senses (the onions will hypothetically induce people to cry, for instance). An antagonistic ratio can be represented as thus: the more the Spacehogger is made to stand out like a sore thumb, the more intense the need for it to be removed as its subtractive powers encroach on the adjacent artworks within the space, diminishing their credibility.

Favouring the sensible approach, I chose not to intensify the destructive subtractive elements and to keep the Spacehogger looking 'prim and proper'. I harboured well-placed concerns over the potential grievances arising from gallerycrashing, so much so, that I even considered forging false documentary evidence to give the impression that the event had taken place, when in reality it had not. It is the communication of an idea which forms the beating heart of an artwork, therefore the real-world factuality surrounding its manifestation takes second stage and could be waived without impairing the validity too severely. Nonetheless, I felt that since gallerycrashing's most artistically satisfying result derives from the curator's genuine attempts to address the problem of lost space- it was necessary to maintain truthfulness at all times. Therefore the lack of a 'stage' resulted in some very haphazard documentary filming, worsened by the stresses of the situation.

Jian Jun Xi, one half of the aforementioned famous interventionist duo 'Mad For Real', after being apprehended for interfering with Tracy Emin's 'My Bed' spoke of being manhandled, "People seemed to enjoy it [the interventionist spectacle], then three security guards got on top of me and I was bleeding. They were very ignorant." (The Evening Standard, 25/10/99: p. 19). I discovered that this heavy-handed 'ignorance' is common; people are only all too happy to physically wrestle someone at the inkling of any wrongdoing they can rectify and emerge from as a hero. Personally, I find the prospect of being touched terrifying.

Through gallerycrashing I uncovered a selection of bitter women in colloquial galleries, shrieking losses of temper, nimble fingered dialers of 999, curator/managers sitting like coiled springs, poised to scratch out the eyes of perceived ne'er-do-wells, or indeed, someone who doesn't appear affluent enough to make a purchase in their bland temples of lameness. Yet these terms are not simply my personal opinions and defences, they are exact mirrorings of the curators' fierce yet utterly inarticulate opinions against the interventionist mode of artistic expression. On the other hand, such negativity and inarticulacy may well be expected of a curator who has just been plunged into panic through their own misapprehensions of an erroneously erected installation. However, for the act to triumph as a clear, unambiguous and effective photographic, audio or video recording it relies heavily on the curator's tolerance and good-natured understanding of the context in which the work is flung into existence.

In the four gallerycrashings I have fully documented (to the best of my abilities), it seems as through any progressive attitudes in the curators are sadly lacking. It was most degrading for me having to be chased across a supermarket car park by a smug, well-built, so-called 'good Samaritan' bloke whom the curator had collared to drag me back to the gallery for her dismal scolding. Woe: when local authorities are summoned, members of the public grapple with the perceived troublemaker/subversive, and the curator bellows heavy-handed borderline-insults such as "you're mentally ill", it renders any vaguely intellectual interventionist argument untenable.

Sadly this mania is only in partial evidence on the second gallerycrashing on the supplementary DVD, however, low quality audio is fed from the Spacehogger's FM transmitter, the footage is poor and the camera had to be switched off and concealed at certain points (the reprimanding made me fear for my possessions). Nonetheless the touchdown sequence is quite intelligible as a conflict can clearly be discerned. Chronologically, the documentation begins with the first Waytemore Gallery gallerycrashing attempt where the curator physically prevented the Spacehogger's installation, kicking the Spacehogger at one point. It should be noted that the camera footage inside the shop is impaired because she noticed the camera and insisted that it was switched off. At key moments though, the camera was surreptitiously activated. She becomes very rude and patronising.

Bizarrely, after the failed gallerycrashing attempts, she neurotically applies a vacuum cleaner to the trapdoor area I had targeted for Spacehogging. This suggests that she felt the cleanliness of the space had been compromised in some way by the mere presence of an interventionist artwork. After an hour it was time to try again with an FM transmitting Spacehogger. Immediately, she sprung up with a viciously sarcastic moan, jabbing the air with a cylindrical pen holder shouting "get out". But when she saw the Spacehogger dormant, successfully hugging the perimeter of the trapdoor's tract, she suddenly dropped the cylindrical pen holder to the floor. The exact same 'dropped object' scenario occurred when a woman nurse saw John Merrick (aka. The Elephant Man) for the first time.

"He [Merrick] had been placed on a bed in the little attic, and a nurse had been instructed to bring him some food. Unfortunately she had not been fully informed of Merrick's unusual appearance. (...) She saw on the bed propped up by white pillows, a monstrous figure (...). At once she dropped the tray she was carrying" (Howell & Ford, 1980: 201).

One can deduce that this reflex action is common to people who have been deeply affected by something sensory. In this respect it is a useful measure to gauge the effectiveness of the Spacehogger as a shockingly unusual piece of art. It may be worth noting that, like John Merrick, I personally appear quite aesthetically challenged. The curator however was made from stronger mettle than a Victorian nurse, she gathered pace to pursue me through the precinct, holding the Spacehogger with the piezo now screaming on the FM band to be reunited with its metal contact point. At this moment I hid for awhile, feeling the dreadful sensation that this act may be artistically invalid as I could recall no historical art discipline to which these low-brow hysterics could possibly belong, before finally setting about retracing the source of the alarm.

Nothing had prepared me for the 'power trip' that this curator indulged in. I was pummelled into submission by headstrong ignoramuses who managed to convince me that I was 'in the wrong', resulting in the failure of this particular gallerycrashing. If these assertions so far sound personal, it is because they are. Street-level interventionist art's democratising effect seeks to elevate personal opinion from the passive and malleable and into the outwardly intervening. But ironically, it is the rural galleries who have evidently harboured the most supreme grudge against conceptual practices and new art forms alien to them, such as performance art, sound installation and video art; growing markets perhaps threatening their failing revenue (judging from the myriad 'art sale now on' banners in their windows indicating price cuts on watercolour prints).

Inversely, they are effecting their opinions too, albeit in the shape of a vehement rejection; harsh words. Their predisposed aversion to non-traditional alternative artforms is further antagonised by the widespread media exposure of character-led art such as that produced by Damien Hirst or Tracy Emin where their own celebrity eclipses the artwork itself- often held as being somewhat thin on tangible craftsmanship. Countryfied galleries are outposts long since cut off from whatever arteries they did once take nourishment, their outright refusal to accept modern artforms leaves them locked in a vacuum of ignorance. Beholding these two very different schools of art, one can immediately deduce that conditions are rife for conflict.

Before conducting the gallerycrashings I had mistakenly assumed that the curators would be laidback aficionados of multi-disciplinary art; this couldn't be further from the truth. From the experiences I have endured and documented, I can argue with confidence that in the current social and cultural climate such physical interventionist art practices are simply not tolerated in these communities, and subsequently dealt with hysterically harshly by the stern curators who uniformly lack any sense of understanding or humour. The third gallerycrashing was smoother, although there was no safe viewpoint to film from. Returning twenty minutes later a fire engine was seen parked outside- although there is no possible way the Spacehogger could catch fire: it is powered by a 9V battery. But as a result of all these unwelcoming attitudes and resultant paranoia, actively engaging art practises are non-existent in provincial environments, and in cities they seem more tentative now than in the first Fluxus era: the glory days of interventionist art.

Bibliography,

Crabtree, T. Central Heating Installation W. Foulsham & Co. Ltd. 1980
Howell & Ford The True History of the Elephant Man Penguin Books Ltd. 1980
Lee, P. M. Object to be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark MIT Press1999