The Seduction Room

One couple face each other over a table on which the arrangement of glasses, napkins, cigarette packets and mobile phones seems haphazard, but is in fact as precisely orchestrated as the pattern of black and white pieces in a game of chess. They speak in quiet, measured tones, watching each other's eyes for the smallest sign — a tremor in the lower lid, a fractional dilation of the pupil — that will betray their opponent's desire.

Another couple chase each other around the tables, sending chairs and ashtrays spinning to the floor, exasperating their fellow patrons. When one catches the other the victory is sealed with a loud slap to the thigh or backside. Then, amid bawdy laughter, the chased becomes the chaser and the game begins again.

A third couple weep in opposite corners of the room. As the jukebox music washes over them, their sobbing faces sink ever deeper into their hands. Their tears are only interrupted when they pause to check — peeping between their fingers — that their misery is still observed from across the room.

All of them believe that the game they are playing — whose rules they have unwittingly invented — cannot be altered, and can only be mastered through a passionate force of self-belief. They also believe that their opponent — who is in fact their mirror-image — is unaware of the true nature of the game, and is only able to follow its outward conventions by mimicking other people. Where they differ is in their visualisation of the prize: a steel tower without windows or doors whose shadow sweeps a land of millions; a swarming beehive; a bathtub full of black ink.