In your wildest dreams

Fourth Plinth memories and Factory International's new immersive experience Sweet Dreams

In a strange coincidence, I was just reading Simon Coates’ New York Observer piece on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square when Facebook flashed up a 15 year memory on my husband’s phone. A photo of me, wearing a black dress, sitting on the Fourth Plinth with a fibreglass penguin - just one of 2,400 people to spend a consecutive hour in the spotlight for Antony Gormley’s One & Other art work.

Half an hour of faffing about with newspaper archives later and I managed to find the piece I wrote as the Liverpool Daily Post arts editor about my hour of fame, that all began with me entering an online lottery and ended with me frantically making origami birds - my fingers folding faster and faster so I didn’t disappoint the increasing numbers of children calling for me to throw them down. Actually, it ended with me being removed by cherry picker at the end of the 60 minutes, but by then everyone’s attention was on the next plinther and had forgotten my existence.

Grainy screenshot of my hour on the Fourth Plinth

Funny how some things stick in your mind while others hide away in the recesses. I did remember that the parasol I took up with me to prevent sunstroke dramatically blew off, but not that someone had commented on the live feed seconds earlier: "I give that brolly two minutes." Other things I had forgotten: 1. Kimi, a 20-something from North Yorkshire who described herself as "creative, happy, excited", hoola-hooping to a backdrop of soap bubbles as I arrived at the 5m plinth. 2. A woman from San Diego who had travelled all the way to London just to watch One & Other chatting to me from the nearby steps. 3. My absolute favourite livestream comment of all: "This has been worthwhile. I used to believe origami was boring. Now I'm sure of it."

All this brings me to today’s main piece, which also invites you to become part of an art work and is, I promise, a lot more engaging than watching me fold origami.

Are you chicken enough to visit Factory International’s new immersive experience?

Sweet Dreams by Marshmallow Laser Feast is at Aviva Studios this summer (Illustrations by McBess)

Meet Chicky Ricky. He’s a cartoon chicken, the mascot of mercenary fast food empire Real Good Chicken Company, who is weirdly into necking chunks of deep fried poultry despite it basically being a convenient form of cannibalism. Believe it or not, by the time you’ve journeyed through Aviva Studios’ blockbuster immersive art experience, you’ll find yourself unexpectedly attached to this naïve and slightly creepy little fellow.

A collaboration between Marshmallow Laser Feast, Factory International and the BFI, Sweet Dreams is a fake factory tour, leading visitors through a series of different spaces just as the company reaches tipping point and decides to bin its loyal mascot in an attempt to reverse declining sales.

Chicky Ricky’s funeral - don’’t worry, it’s just a nightmare (Pic: James Medcraft)

It starts in a museum-style room, with vintage posters on the walls and Real Good Chicken Company artefacts in glass display cases; takes you into the factory itself, where you are expected to don a fluorescent jacket and get to work; transports you inside one of Chicky Ricky’s nightmares; and invites you to relax on a beanbag while the R&D department questions your attitudes to food.

Yes, it’s as strange as it sounds - stranger actually, given that in Chicky Ricky’s nightmare he is trapped in a giant coffin with his feet sticking out, while conversing with stained glass windows shaped like the company’s evil head honcho, Boss, and rejected mascot pal, the lost orphan Penny Peckish. Penny, incidentally, is wise to Boss’ immoral plans, but it’s done her no good as her lips have been sewn together to prevent her public protestations about marketing junk food to the already undernourished.

Visitors press buttons to make the animated machinery move in Sweet Dreams at Aviva Studios (Pic: James Medcraft)

The wild ride through Real Good Chicken Company is as funny and thought-provoking as it is sinister and eccentric: “Are you a vegan who eats meat when you’re drunk?” it asks us at one point. Marshmallow Laser Feast’s work is known for blending a range of artistic disciplines, including motion graphics, sculpture, illustration and cinema, placing equal value on each, which really comes out in Sweet Dreams’ attention to detail. Watching an animated chicken having an identity crisis is entertaining enough, but it’s all the other elements that make it feel almost real.

In the museum room, small sculptures turn out to be industry awards - a giant gold curly straw presented for “RGC’s commitment to never stop using plastic straws, however bad it gets”; and The Wishbone Award 1954 when the company’s chicken was “voted the number one food customers would like to die eating”. There’s even a RCG-branded version of those plastic sliding square puzzles that were the must-have party bag filler of the 80s.

In the factory, art blends with gaming technology as you are told to push illuminated buttons that control different bits of animated machinery onscreen. The tasks are fun at first, then grow dull and repetitive, then stressful as Boss pressures you to work harder and faster.

You don’t have to think too deeply to enjoy Sweet Dreams. It doesn’t labour its message, more nudges you to start asking questions about your own relationship to food and the way it’s marketed to us. But it does make you realise that there’s a bit of Chicky Ricky inside us all - not because we had a takeaway for tea, but in the way we conveniently distance ourselves from realities of the food we eat.

Sweet Dreams is at Aviva Studios until September 1. Book tickets here.

Thank you for reading this week’s Stored Honey. If you are an arts organisation or individual who would like to be featured in a future edition, get in touch on X/Twitter, in the comments or by dropping me a line at tostoredhoney@gmail.com.

Just a reminder that there will be no arts and culture news edition on Tuesday as I’m away next week - but I’ll be back on Saturday with another long read.

Have a fun week,

Laura