There is avant-garde film-making, Moroccan literature and Berber storytelling in a new art installation opening in the BBC’s soon-to-be demolished Television Centre. Doctor Who’s Tardis, Daleks and Jan Leeming also feature.
The unlikely mix can be found in a vast work by the artist and film-maker Ben Rivers, who this summer is taking over the now empty drama block at the BBC’s former home in White City, west London.
Commissioned by Artangel, The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers consists of films, sounds and stories, all taking place in a building used to paint and build TV sets before their construction was moved to the main BBC studios.
“Walking in here was incredible,” said Rivers. “It was exactly the kind of place I was thinking of – it has a history seeped in its walls.”
His work brings together Rivers’ various obsessions, notably film-making, set building and the American Morocco-based writer Paul Bowles. All are presented in a fascinating building where the ghosts of BBC past can still be felt.
In the paint frame room Michael Morris, Artangel’s co-director, points to a late 1950s machine used to raise and lower set backgrounds for painting. Some say it was an inspiration for the Tardis’s console, he said. In the next room are skylights which look exactly like the knobbly bits on a Dalek.
Curators also found a store cupboard where a large 1980s photograph hangs of a smiling Jan Leeming, the former BBC newsreader. “I have no idea what she is doing there,” said Morris. “We couldn’t resist opening the door and letting people see in.”
Morris said the space was ideal because Rivers was exploring films about film-making and, specifically, the abandoned TV and film sets which litter the Moroccan Sahara desert.
“What we’ve done is construct makeshift cinemas out of old film sets in a space where sets were constructed,” said Morris. “We’ve built kind of salvaged cinemas.”
Rivers thinks some people who come to the installation will be as interested in the building as they are in the art.
“It is an amazing building,” he said. “It is like a found artwork in a way. Yes, people might come to see the building because they are intrigued by it, but hopefully they will get sucked into the work too.
“The idea is that the work and the space speak to each other and that is so much more exciting than doing it in a blank space.”
The installation will be in place for more than two months, in the middle of what is effectively a building site with much of the TV Centre due to be pulled down and turned into flats, offices and TV studios. The BBC left in 2013 as part of its move to Salford.
At the heart of Rivers’ project is an adaptation of a 1947 short story set in Morocco called A Distant Episode by Bowles, a writer best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky.
The various films include one of a Moroccan storyteller called Mohammed Mrabet, who was a friend of Bowles and provides a direct link back because he is still alive.
The installation is both fun and challenging, typical of Artangel which has been commissioning artists in unusual spaces for more than 20 years. Previous projects include Jeremy Deller re-enacting the clashes between striking miners and police at Orgreave, and PJ Harvey recording her album in a glass studio in Somerset House.
The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers was also co-commissioned by the BFI’s Film Fund and the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, and the plan is for a single feature film to be released later this year.
There is a lot going on in the artwork, agrees Rivers, who won a prize at the 2011 Venice film festival for his first feature film Two Years At Sea. “I pitched something to Artangel which I don’t think made a lot of sense ... I think that’s why they liked it!”
• The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers is at Television Centre, White City, London from 26 June – 31 August.
