Return to Dreamphone:
The Bottleneck

The Bottleneck is a poem and a constantly regenerating map. It follows the waterway along a speculative Wembley Brook, charting the flora, fauna and human-made structures that dot the banks. It suggests a world where artificial constructions along a riverbank are seen as alien, as unknowable. Towers are mistaken for monoliths, pulled from another time. A signal permeates the air, picked up by travellers along the river. 

Hinting at team card games like Bridge, games of chance seen in casinos, and exercises in divination like Tarot, the piece is presented on a felted table. The table is in the shape of the Wembley Brook flood basin, an area where water seeps upwards into human inhabitation. It is where silt, rich with biological and historical information, sits just below the surface. 

Participants are invited to alter the layout of the cards, either through their own associative reading, or through a game left in the space in the form of a guidebook. 

The Bottleneck is one part of Nick Murray’s solo show Return to Dreamphone, which was exhibited at ACAVA Barham Park (26-30 March) as the culmination of Nick Murray’s six month artist residency. The exhibition booklet can be read here.

The Bottleneck was restaged as a communal and collaborative tabletop roleplay game touching on New Weird and biopunk themes as part of the Brent Biennial: WATER on 22nd June at the Brent Reservoir / Wembley Sailing Club.