Institute of Contemporary Arts

Save us, Pazuzu!

Date: 9 October 2008

Even as stocks and shares go into freefall, you can still laugh at the credit crunch. Because despite world capitalism's reliance on the overheated mathematics of the financial markets, and inter-bank lending, for most of us it's not as if our way of life is really changing. We still get up in the morning, go to work, and go out in the evening. The nature of our life hasn't really changed.

But if you really think nothing can touch us, Jared Diamond's excellent book Collapse tells some salutary tales about societies on the verge of destruction, like the Polynesian civilisation of Easter Island, who thought they had never been stronger. One such society that collapsed completely was the city of Nineveh. It was once at the heart of the Assyrian Empire, which in the early seventh century reached from the Persian gulf to Egypt and Anatolia, but in 612BC the city was utterly sacked, razed, and its inhabitants deported or put to the sword. All that's left of their civilisation is what archeologists can dig out of the dirt.

The fall of Nineveh is at the heart of Roberto Cuoghi's new work, Šuillakku. Inspired by the fate of the Assyrian people, Cuoghi has constructed an enveloping, immersive sound installation, around a lament for the lost civilisation. Constructing his own instruments from the fruits of both historical research and raw imagination, Cuoghi created an entire orchestra including a giant harp-like lyre with which to record the work, including many modulations of his own voice. (Cuoghi is a man who pays great attention to detail: he once spent seven years occupying the persona of his own father).

The work, based on a reading-back of the traditional Hebrew lament (as found in the Bible's psalms) has four phases: the first two, isolation and irritation come from the sense that crisis is upon the people. Negotiation is an attempt to deal with fate, or plead for intercession. When this fails, all is lost, and there is only despair.

During his researches into Nineveh, Cuoghi came across the demon Pazuzu, and the second part of his work at the ICA is the impressive and frightening statue of Pazuzu now looking out across the Mall. He arrived in separate pieces this morning in a truck driven straight from Italy, and carefully winched into place on his pedestal on the foyer roof. The amount of skilled work that goes on behind the scenes to put a work of art into place always amazes me. The Italian art-movers, a remote-control crane operator, and our own expert gallery crew were all involved in disassembling crates and lifting and bolting the constituent pieces into place. There were a few tense moments fixing the upper half in position, as photographers scuttled around, and a round of appluase from the crowd of bypassers gathered below when he was finally complete.

You'll have met Pazuzu before. He's the demon who possesses Linda Blair in The Exorcist, and in a more friendly fashion, the band Gorillaz have also used him as an icon and in their Rock It video. Like Cuoghio himself, Pazuzu is nothing if not multi-faceted: when he's not inside a pre-teen, spinning her head around like a top, he has the body of a man, the head of a dog, the tail of a scorpion, wings, and a serpentine penis.

He's a double-sided kind of personality: once part of a pantheon of gods, particularly responsible for the wind that brought famine or locusts, he was displaced by the monotheistic Assyrian religion of Ashur, but survived as a folk-demon and protector. The Assyrian people of Nineveh used Pazuzu only to ward off what was worse that Pazuzu, such as his rival Lamashtu, who harmed women during childbirth. You turn to Pazuzu only when it is only Pazuzu who can save you.

Is it time for the ICA to turn to Pazuzu? As you might have noticed, we're about to auction some rather nice contemporary art, at a time when financial markets are collapsing, and some even doubt whether the art market will hold it value. Is it only Pazuzu who can save us now?

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