Toynbee Studios Launch Event
London

A site-specific commission to celebrate the re-opening of Toynbee Studios on 1st March 2007.

I used the imagery of cutting ribbon and the opening and bubbling up of champagne to create an installation that became a celebratory event.

I installed, with the pyrotechnicians and artists Nick Sales and Mark Anderson, over 100 ribbons of 100 metres, each with an electrically detonated explosive charge  to ignite  and cut through them to finally release the new building.

During the days before, the ribbons acted as a gigantic aeolian harp, playing mysterious hummings and throbbings in the wind.

I involved the high rise block opposite Toynbee Studios, with performers from the Shree Muktajeevan Swamibapa Pipe Band dressed in full Scottish regalia standing on each balcony hosted by individual families, with 10m of rope light hanging down from each of the balconies, as well as on roofs of office blocks and various levels of Toynbee itself.

The installation, with the building swathed in white ribbons and several bubble machines installed on different levels bubbling profusely, started when the pipers opposite and around the roofs and levels, switched on the light ropes and starting to play a piece composed and orchestrated by Ansuman Biswas.  The pipers, were then all illuminated by individual spotlights and various pyrotechnic whistles and whistling helium balloons, interjected with the piping.

The building was unveiled by the explosion of the ribbons which opened up to reveal the newly refurbished Toynbee Studios. A huge finale of lance-work sparked up to spell out the words TO BE which transformed into TOYNBEE.