SHOW TEXT

Before attaching the final panel to the central monolith we send the slightest member of our group through the hatch to check over the timing devices and debrief the one whose voluntary incarceration has left us dumb with admiration and gratitude. Armed with a torch and inventory she calls out items for us to check against the installation plan.

The pewter flasks containing the most essential ingredients are aligned, with pious symmetry, along the shelf of the north-facing wall. Beards of classical antiquity, restyled in the spirit of late modern pedagogy, wave gently in the updraft from the cooling apparatus of twenty idling desktop units. Every cable is double checked to ensure robust connectivity. They must quadruple loop according to a strict code of symbolism mirroring the greater Order of Things passed down to us from the celestial membrane. One artefact a millimetre out of alignment could subvert fusion and ruin months of painstaking research.

Against the south facing wall of our makeshift pyxis stands a heavily customised pick’n’mix unit ceremoniously lifted from the local Woolworths outlet seconds before its Sublimation. This re-jigged mechanism will inject carefully measured compounds of sour fuel to the machine at the heart of our hidden exhibit. The Counter-Euclidean Falsifier. At 8pm on the 27th March the standby LED on the device will turn green. What happens next will become an irrelevance. What happens before will become a crystalline trace-labyrinth of hauntological permanence. So it goes.

Our systems checker calls out and we tick the final box. We retire respectfully while our representative has a final conference with the celebrity operant who will maintain solemn vigil over the experimental proceedings. The Embassy’s selfless guest arrived at noon today dressed with typically flamboyant eccentricity—as a wheelchair bound plague doctor. We ushered her respectfully inside the monolith and watched as she placed vile taints on ever corner of her new territory. After testing a few levers and typing some code with the tip of her leather beak she indicated her satisfaction with a curt nod. We placed blankets on her lap, an M&S fruit basket at her feet and applied the humane restraints. At one final request we fastened an un-ripened Belladonna to her lapel.

We listen now to the soft murmurs of conversation emitting from the chamber. The fourth committee member emerges, using her clipboard to waft clouds of foul incense from her ashen face. We are ready to seal the chamber now and so unwrap a cloth containing screwdrivers anointed with Horker Tusk, Hound Meat and Bungler's Bane to deflect cross-enchantment. With the last section of plasterboard in place we head across the road for a well earned baked potato.
When we return we begin work on installing the external exhibition.

EMBASSY
25/03/09