Detail from installation. The Magnolia Room Presents…The Multistand – Nehmen Sie Doch die Blaue Pille! Multi-dimensional installation. The Wild Pansy Project Space, School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. November 2011 – Jan 2012.
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The Multistand was in residence within the Wild Pansy’s ‘Magnolia Room and was the portal for ‘Time Junkies’ everywhere: Part Pharmacy, part Imbiss and part Library; ‘The Multistand’ invited you to take The Blue Pill as opposed to The Red; The Blue Pill being the Synaesthesic Key to Time and Memory – Past and Future. The Multistand warns that the Red Pill, like the infamous ‘Red Shoes’ will only lead you back to a contrived and delusional virtuality.
Agent Smith: “I… hate… this place, this zoo, this prison, this reality—whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell!, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it….I must get out of here. I must get free!
The Multistand: “Ganz ruhig, Agent Smith! You take the Blue Pill and I’ll show you just how deep this particular rabbit hole really does go…”
The Magnolia Room’s Multistand also housed its own edition of the newly Odorised Index Librorum Prohibitorum, Les Pages Bleues – A Guide to Historical Inaccuracies and Religious Intolerance plus many other copious and intriguing volumes.
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Barbara Ryan was an artist, writer, perfumier and neurolinguistics researcher, based in England and the former German Democratic Republic. Some of her work explored the nature of synaesthesic perception of time, space and her olfactory to colour cross wiring modalities.
