Il tempo del postino, or all that bull

"Il tempo del postino" is conceived not so much as a show, but as an exhibition - the exhibits being presented over time, rather than through space, to a seated rather than mobile audience. It is, in this sense, right that Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno are titled curators. But what then are they curating? As an overall theme, and one is never stated beyond time and postmen (topical note: where, in all solidarity, is mine?), it is difficult to think of an overarching theme other than perception and how it might be played with

The show opens with music from a mechanical piano, followed by a ventriloquist compere, and then dancing red velvet curtains - a quite beautiful piece of wit from Phillipe Parreno. From this point and for the most of the remainder of the show we are presented with conceptions of some seriously clever artists, all of which one might wish had been developed further.

Anri Sala gives us an aria from Madame Butterfly, but there are four butterflies and two Pinkertons. Placed on stage and in the audience, they share the singing part of any given moment, lip syncing when not voicing. The effect is one of great disorientation for the audience as sound bounces from stage to upper circle.

Perception is also at the heart of Carsten Holler's "Upside Down People 2007" in which three (willing) volunteers have their vision inverted, or, as our retina naturally gives an inverted image which the brain corrects, set right side up. For the volunteers this is not a instantaneous process, as they have viewed the world as it "is" for eight days and have special visors removed on stage. There is very real thrill in watching their reaction to the removal of these visors. Do the subjects reject their status as entertaining guinea pigs? Will they collapse in fits of vomiting? If perception is the theme of this exhibition, this piece works in terms of forcing the audience to question its relationship to what's on stage, as access to any inverted world is limited to the volunteers' minds.

Tino Seghal uses the patter of auctioneers to call attention to the sheer musicality of language even when spoken at speed (this musicality may have had much to do the with the repetition of the word "dollars", the only one I could recognize). Finally from the first "act" there was the sage advise of triplets directed by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Arto Lindsay: "I own no more than is necessary, So I work no more than necessary".

Following an interval there followed the most covered event of the show and the arrival of Ross the Highland bull on stage. Ross is a reasonably docile animal from what I have seen of him, and was probably more than happy to help Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler with their particular artistic vision.

This involved a crashed car on the stage, on this would lie a woman, apparently with prosthetic legs. In front of the car stands a woman fisting herself. Men in combatwear melt plastic to drape over the auto-fister. She remains in the black hood for the remainder of the scene. This is presided over by a small dog, mounted atop a man in a lighter shade of combats. You must understand, the whole thing is all very Egyptian afterlife while I suppose recalling a more recnt Abu Ghrahib.

In black and in white spangles arrive two stilettoed models, who parade around the stage at dramatically slow pace, before bending over backwards in front of the car, showing off their Brazilians and urinating. They will remain in these damp poses for the next fifteen minutes.

By this point in time the audience is getting tetchy for non- terrorist, non-urinary contact. Did I forget the on-stage and in-audience wind militia? Well, they were there too, apart from those playing diminutive ukeles, who strummed their all behind balaclavas. To keep interest alive, Ross is brought in, very prettily tethered by a beribboned rope. After a tour around the car, hooded fister, and model vaginas, he is invited to smell a she-bull skin laid on the bonnet of crashed car.

You can see where this is going, yet to the presumed relief of the lady with the prosthetic legs atop the vehicle, Ross is no exhibitionist and fails to add to the bodily fluids on stage by fucking the car as was intended.

He is led away, possibly in some disgrace, while the fist is at last removed allowing the shit to land on the stage, joining the pile which had fallen some twenty minutes earlier with the start of Barney's conception.

Many will find all this offensive, either through the sexuality of the piece or its use of animals. Barney and Bepler's real offense, both to their audience and the other artists they share the stage with, is simply using sensation to mask the elaborate tedium they ask us to indulge them in.

My advice: leave at the interval.

The Saffron Kitchen, by Yasmin Crowther

When the orphaned Saeed arrives in London to live with his aunt Maryam, he sets off a series of events which forces her to confront the past she left in Iran half a century earlier. Difficult as Maryam may find this, she at least knows her past. Her journey upsets the complacent life of her daughter, Sara, as she learns about the woman who is her mother. Told in their alternating voices, Crowther’s debut novel is full of the colours and smells of metropolitan England and the mountains of Iran. But in the dislocated lives of Maryam and Sara, it is the cupboards of London which are “filled with henna, herbs, dried figs and limes” and the smells of the Tube that are found in the fast-growing cities of Iran. While Crowther’s attempt to evoke mood and place occasionally overwhelms her narrative, The Saffron Kitchen marks the collision between a past where choices were too few and a present where choice itself is taken for granted.