We booked a night in a hotel in Wandsworth the night before we were due to fly out to Hanoi as I was worried that there would be some issue with the trains from Bexhill after the bank holiday weekend and that I would miss my flight. We decided to go to the ‘Electric Dreams’ and ‘Leigh Bowery’ exhibitions at Tate Modern, as I have joined as a member recently.

The Louise Bourgeois giant spider, ‘Mama’ was in the Turbine Hall. I’ve read that it’s meant to represent strength, vulnerability and protection. I’ve never experienced her spiders in that way though. To me, the eggs in the spider’s abdomen look like they are imprisoned. I feel oppressed rather than protected standing within the spider’s legs as they tower over me. The sculpture makes me feel like running away!

I really enjoyed the way so many of the pieces in ‘Electric Dreams’ invited collaboration from the viewer. The whole exhibition felt fun and playful. In one room stencils projected beautiful patterns of light onto the walls. In a corridor the walls were covered with patterns that gave an optical illusion of movement. They made me feel slightly queasy. Kids and adults were playing with balls in a space where stripes of light were projected onto the walls and floor.

Another exhibit, a kind of spinning lantern was inspired by the artist sensing the light playing against his closed eyes on a bus in Marseille.

Other exhibits played with viewers perceptions and prefigured the world of video game art. One exhibit showcased a project in which engineers, artists, architects and others had all collaborated to create a giant dome that was reflective inside, with the idea of exploring the limits of human perception. Is this sort of creative collaboration between different academic disciplines still happening in academia anywhere now? The area of Games Art Design, which Hazel is studying seems to come close.

I read a terrible review of the Leigh Bowery exhibition by a young writer who suggested that Bowery did not produce good art and relied only on shock value. She argued that in modern social media culture we are beyond being shocked and thus Bowery’s art is redundant. I have to disagree. The exhibition reminded of how the art of Bowery’s generation was profoundly political. The reviewer had suggested that Bowery ignored the negative side of LGBTQ culture. I thought that in a video of the hookers and rent boys in central London circa 1980 with a sound track by Boy George definitely ticked that box. A lot of the exhibition was also very funny.

Despite initially getting on the wrong train we made it to Gatwick on time the next morning. The flight was uneventful. It was very empty, so we managed to lie down and get some shut eye. This time we stopped in Shanghai airport which felt slightly less sinister with fewer cameras on obvious show that Beijing. In the transit queue I got chatting to a Vietnamese girl in her twenties who is studying law at the University of East Anglia. Her Father is a judge and her Mother a lawyer in Vietnam. Her Mum sent her to study law in the UK and her sister to study law in Australia! She sounded like a formidable woman! We had a good chat on a wide range of issues including Donald Trump, Hanoi, Brexit, Nigel Farage and racism in the UK while we were queuing and on the flight to Hanoi.

We managed to find the bus, right outside the airport terminal, which took us straight into Hanoi old town centre where we are staying. It was air conditioned and comfortable. I much prefer airport buses to airport taxis which I find it hard to trust after diverse negative experiences of being ripped off by them around the globe! After a short nap we forced ourselves to get up and begin to explore Hanoi. We went for a short walk around the streets near our hotel and Ho Hoan Kim ‘Turtle Lake’ which links the old town of Hanoi with the French quarter. The air was hot and sticky and it was frenetic and crowded, but it felt great to be travelling again.