Exhibitionists

It is a well-known fact that animal behaviour deteriorates dramatically if there is a critical level of overcrowding, if the natural space animals inhabit is persistently violated.  And yet one of the characteristic activities of the late twentieth century is built around an organised version of this very loss of personal space. But at a cost.

These events are called trade exhibitions.  They involve, on scales ranging from tens of exhibitors and hundreds of visitors to thousands of the former and many tens of thousands of the latter, bringing together within a very constricted space and for a limited time, all the constituent elements of an industry sector to form a complete microcosm.  The better the exhibition, the more closely it mirrors the larger world.

But it is a distorting mirror, and a selective one.  It is as if all the inessentials of the outside environment had been pared away to reveal the bones; as if the rest of the world were just scenery: exhibitions remove that scenery to reveal the actors on a bare stage, staring at each other.

Because the scenery is minimal, and because the natural territorial spaces are eroded, the behaviour of exhibitors and visitors alike is extraordinary.  The exhibitors must keep their posts as inflexibly as they must keep their smiles.  Everyone is dressed to the nines - particularly ironic in view of the fact that exhibition halls are invariably hot and clammy.  It is like something out of a Grosz caricature, the bovine men in their business uniforms, ties awry, the blowsy women hired for the day, heavily made up and scantily and tastelessly dressed, leering fixedly and passionlessly at the jaded punters.  - Who themselves adopt awkward stances, their gazes studiedly avoiding the aggressively eager stand attendants.  And like those attendants and their sad female baits, visitors seem to be condemned to remain upright without respite, as if it were an unspoken contest - a standing marathon - or a slow, insidious torture.

It is partly this which contributes to the surreal quality of exhibitions.  Every visitor is on the move, restless and unsatisfied.  They are searching perhaps for that new product, that important contract - perhaps just for the exit.  But in a sense that searching assumes an almost abstract nature, as if it were part of the condition of such events.

And this searching never seems to stop, just as the show itself never changes.  There is no possibility of development.  And so there is no sense of time, which can only be grasped by observing processes which evolve.  Such shows seem to last an eternity.

The images begin to fall into place.  The venue is hot and airless, vast and echoing with the constant confused hubbub.  Everyone is moving, endlessly moving, like the poor souls which Dante saw.  Everyone is searching for something, a resolution which never comes.  And everyone is suffering; it shows on their faces which shine with a strained, unnatural light as they shuffle amid the sweaty throng, trying to avoid their sight, smell and touch.  Exhibitions are hell, and hell is other people. 

(1.8.87)

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