The Magik Camera

Just along from The Lamp, after the Tyre Station, is a small shop with a faded wooden sign. A few cardboard displays clutter two green shelves, which rise up in steep curves behind two grey yellow windows. A strip of gnarled meat hangs from the door. A poster reads 'batteries'.

Inside, the walls are covered in red velvet. The shabby window displays are a deception. The interior is pristine, empty, save for a single glass bowl, positioned at head height on a stainless steel pillar, which is bolted to the floor in the centre of the room. As the door clicks shut a quiet mechanism is triggered. Lights dim to darkness.

A softly flickering bulb emerges, descending on a pulley from a hole in the centre of the ceiling. In its centre, in place of the usual coiled filament, is set a pyramid of dark crystal. A trickle of clear liquid runs down the pulley, over the bulb, and into the bowl. Just as the bulb reaches the centre of the bowl, it meets with the rising pool, which is visibly thicker than water. 

The moment that the bulb and liquid touch, a silent blue wave of light, fierce enough to temporarily knock a person unconscious, tears through the room. Its aftermath and glow is astonishing. The red walls are bleached white, and figurative shadows appear, crowding the space, quietly circling the molten remains of glass, which is twisted and caramelised into the shape of a shell.

The shadows begin to assume recognisable features. All the people that the visitor to the shop has ever known, on intimate terms, appear before them. They repeat a whispered, psychic mantra, composed of the most private conversations held in relation to the visitor. This is by turns distressing and erotic. The visitor is given pause by closing their eyes and covering their ears. A new clarity is born. Awareness that every manifestation of desire has been, however illusively, externalised, allows the mind to re-apprehend itself. The visitor gropes for the door and emerges, in the renewed exposure of daylight.