Words Dept.: entry

The concept of It Felt Like A Kiss isn’t especially easy to pin down in words. Which in my book is no bad thing. The production, developed by documentary film maker Adam Curtis, Felix Barrett and installation theatre company Punchdrunk, premieres at the Manchester International Festival tonight. It straddles the line between video documentary, theatre and art installation with extraordinary results.

(Note: This review does not contain spoilers. But if you want no hints at all about the contents of the show, you may want to look away now.)

At its centre is a new 35-minute documentary by Curtis, which, unlike much of his previous work, steers clear of a concrete ”storyline” and does away with the director’s trademark voiceover. That’s not to say there isn’t a theme: Curtis somehow manages to weave a plausible, if deliberately hazy, narrative connection between chimps in space and the collapse of the Twin Towers via Rock Hudson and Doris Day. The film, as one might expect, is a masterpiece of montage. Curtis revels in his trademark splices, which, as usual, are coupled with deliberately disarming sound effects and music. Fans, like me, will be blown away.

To reach the documentary, viewers must walk through the vacant office building where the show takes place via a series of spaces that are richly packed with items that hint at what’s to come. If I had one quibble, it would be that there was a tendency for participants to dawdle a little in the early stages, seeking to attach meaning to every object on show - like a game of live-action Cluedo - rather than take in the overall “feel” of what was being presented. This inevitably led to later bottlenecks and a “running time” that clocked in at two-and-a-half hours, rather than the 75 minutes suggested.

Curtis has said IFLAK is about “how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy – but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world.” It’s about both ”enchantment and menace”, he says.

At one point, the spotlight – literally – falls on Philip K. Dick’s 1959 novel Time Out of Joint, the story of a man whose existence is ultimately revealed to be a “constructed reality”, created by society’s powerful elite. While the early stages of the production force participants to consider this conundrum at a distance – poking around in safety and unearthing the nuggets that have been left hanging around for signs of some kind of meaning - the latter stages put them at the heart of a nightmare. B.F. Skinner and his idea of Relative Behaviourism loom large, while Curtis ultimately returns to the themes of individualism and freedom that were explored in Century of the Self and The Trap. After an astonishing sound installation in the building’s basement, one is forced suddenly into the night, wondering what the hell just happened.

While the content of the show is spectacular, it’s fair to say their were some teething troubles at last night’s preview. An unfortunate queue midway through left us stewing in a sweltering corridor with 15 other people for around 20 minutes. Air conditioning would have helped – unless, of course, borderline heat exhaustion was the director’s way of unsettling us for the final section.

Overall, though, IFLAK is a remarkable, ambitious and brilliant production. Curtis is a rare maverick genius of the video age. Entering this world is something very special.