Normally it is tricky to take in every detail of the work that made Scottish-born artist Douglas Gordon famous: 24 Hour Psycho is his homage to the Hitchcock thriller, and slows the film down so that it each frame lasts longer than a heartbeat. It takes, as the title suggests, 24 hours to watch the entire piece.
For the dedicated fan, the Hayward Gallery in London will offer this experience, when it opens for 24 hours from 10am on Friday morning. The date is Friday 13th.
The less dedicated can drop in at any time during the marathon, when the gallery will also be offering ghost stories, tattooing, a performance of a new composition for the musical saw, and other odd or downright creepy events inspired by the artist's preoccupation with good and evil, light and dark.
The exhibition includes his Darkness and Light, which projects two films simultaneously on to the same screen, the notorious thriller The Exorcist and the saccharine piety of The Song of Bernadette. The event is sponsored by Arts & Business, so admission is free, the bar and cafe will be open all night - with horror films shown in the small hours - and the survivors are promised a free breakfast.
Many critics have commented how perfectly Gordon's singular world view fits into the dark labyrinth of the Hayward, a classic lump of concrete brutalist architecture, which was threatened with demolition in the planned restructuring of the South Bank arts complex.
In fact, the exhibition is the last before the gallery closes at the end of January for eight months, to let the light shine in. A £1.3m arts lottery grant has been announced, to add a new glass foyer and an elliptical mirrored glass pavilion, designed by the New York-based artist Dan Graham.
Meanwhile, the gallery remains as dark and ominous as Gordon's heart could desire. True art lovers will of course watch every frame of the 24 hours: philistine thrill-seekers might like to note that the famous murder in the shower will happen, very slowly, from 8pm until 9pm on Friday night.
The Guardian is the media partner for the Douglas Gordon exhibition, which is sponsored by Bloomberg.
