The darkness

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light," said the blind and deaf American author Helen Keller and I think she was right...certainly as these autumnal days draw in and it's nearly dark by 4.30pm. Brrrr. I need all the friends I can get. 

So it happened that I trundled off with two such lovely persons to experience the relatively new steel chamber devoid of light in Tate Modern's turbine hall. The three of us held hands as we gingerly walked up the big wide ramp to be wrapped in a silent blanket of blackness with only a vague green hue from a faraway light. Even more scary than the dark unknown were the occasional ghostly figures looming into view and then just as suddenly vanishing again. Shuffling feet, giggles, the odd "where are you?" and yelps of surprise are all part of experiencing the huge 13m high x 30m long installation on stilts How It Is by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka.  

Being inside the black box is disturbing and nerve-jangling for the first couple of minutes. But then a strange thing happens. It's like someone found the dimmer switch and gradually turned the light up. After five minutes your eyes adjust so that you're confident taking big strides from one wall across to the other while circumnavigating everyone else. And when you reach the far material-clad wall and look back to the entrance it's almost sci-fi in a Close Encounters of the Third Kind shadowy way.

The serious message behind How It Is is its reference to the cattle trucks used by the Nazis to transport Jews to death camps. Balka explains this concept in The Times and how he wanted to create "a photographic black hole", the opposite of Olafur Eliasson's popular light sculpture The Weather Project shown in the turbine hall six years ago.

Yet for all that, the dark is fun and makes you briefly think in a different way. And I'll bet a frisky couple will chance their luck before April rolls round and it's dismantled. Whether they're caught and we get to hear about it remains to be seen (no pun intended).

Talking of thinking in a different way in the dark, I experienced my first float a few days ago. Lying in salt  water for an hour in a confined, coal-black room relaxes you, detoxifies you, makes you more creative etc. It was a belated birthday present so I went with an open mind. However, rational thoughts such as drowning in ten inches of water and running out of oxygen with no one to hear my last gasps kept bubbling to the surface.

Death by float seemed like a distinct possibility for at least quarter of an hour. I spent the remaining 45 minutes silently concentrating on the filmy aqueous sheet on which I was buoyed, trying not to succumb to any violent arm flailing that might hinder my chances of survival. So I was indeed reinvigorated by the time I left and grateful for the wondrous world in which I was still alive.

Might try that dine in the dark restaurant next. Unless I choke on an unidentified object, I should be safe.