A heavily made-up Iranian woman in bra and knickers is dancing seductively before me. We’re in some vast warehouse, and she’s swaying barefoot. But then I look around. All the other men here are in military uniforms and leaning against walls or sitting at desks, smoking and looking at her impassively. I slowly realise we are in a torture chamber and this lithe, writhing woman is dancing, quite possibly, for her life. Me? I have become one of her tormentors.
You can immerse yourself in war-ruined Ukraine, go on the run from the Holocaust, become a mushroom
Welcome to The Fury, a bravura attempt by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat to use virtual technology in her art.
‘Have you ever experienced VR before?’ asks the assistant as she adjusts my goggles, while I sit myself on a stool that rotates through 360º. Only once: I was across town at the Saatchi Gallery, masked up and sitting on a chair that came to life, hurling me forward to explore a simulation of Tutankhamen’s tomb.
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