The mid-1990s was still a good time to search out unused, unwanted spaces in London – not as good as the early 1990s, but a lot better than now. The Clink Street vaults were like a huge underground street, in a part of London very near the City and very near the River Thames, but which every development boom had passed by (until the last one). From the street outside, it was impossible to have any idea of the scale of the spaces behind the facade.
Precisely when H.G. Wells entered the equation is unclear. 1995 was the 100th anniversary of The Time Machine, but the relationship was always understated, even if the first room did create an explicit connection with the first chapter of the book. The space was the starting point, rather than the book...
The audience was only allowed to go in one or two at a time, entering through an unprepossessing door. The transition from the street into the first room was startling. You came into a Victorian dining room from which the guests had departed, leaving the food on the table. There was the sound of a grandfather clock ticking.
On your way out of this room, you passed a copy of The Times newspaper from 100 years ago and then travelled down into the dark spaces beyond. It was only after a minute or two that you had any sense of how cavernous the space was. Following the choreographed beginning to the work, the audience was then free to wander through time and space at will.
Most of the time tableaux were open for people to walk around and through, but two or three were closed off. The skills of a film production designer came into full play here - using an economy of means to create extraordinary vistas onto inaccessible places, a glimpse of some pre-Iapsarian paradise through some bars in a door, some Classical ruins with a shaft of golden arrows seen through some broken brickwork.
H.G. was a collaborative project all the way down the line. Michael Morris had known Hans Peter for a while and through him Bob too. Following their first visits to London, we decided to work on H.G. together.
It was illuminating to see how they made the work, how they collaborated with Michael Howells, the film production designer to whom Michael Morris introduced them, as well as with a large group of artists and technicians. Bob would visualise an idea - a medieval figure lying down, illuminated by a shaft of blue light, for example and then Michael Howells gave a particular form to the idea. Things were added or taken away or shifted around - as if the images were being made and then edited. In the meantime, in parallel, Hans Peter was working on the sound.
Kuhn's sound was as important as Wilson's vision. On occasion the sound was very forceful – for example a train rushing through the vaults. But in most of the spaces it was localised and subtle. There was one room with a hole cut in the ceiling and a globe made out of cotton wool. What made that room work was the sound of footsteps slowly walking around the space above.