The door to the Escape Room opens to reveal a wondrous, almost surreal cosmos. The tables laden with tools, sketches and materials of all kinds suggest that this could be Cardiff & Miller’s studio. The lavishly detailed dioramas are unsettling. Every scene, whether it is a cathedral, a futuristic skyscraper, a factory or a port, seems eerily deserted, evoking a mood of apocalyptic gloom. The Escape Room can be entered and experienced at first hand, like an analogue computer game. Entering it, triggers light effects and sound tracks, which bring it to life. The artists’ own narrative fragments provide cryptic clues to absorb the narrative, while the selected works of literature point to possible sources of inspiration.

Escape Room was created during the Covid-19 pandemic and is a powerful reminder of what social isolation and loneliness felt like. Leaving it is like awaking from a dream. Soon our memories of it become clouded and unreal, just as our experience of lockdown has done.

Credits

Project management: Zev Tiefenbach

Research and Development and Production Support: Robyn Moody

Production Assistants: Maryke Simmonds, Molly March and Jamie Oosterhuis

Skype encouragement: Carlo Crovato

Bidule programming assistance: Glenn C. Newell