Case Study. New York: Routledge) p Routledge) 1 Francis Morris (2006:21) in Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010,

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1 Case Study To enter the museum through the exhilarating space of the Turbine Hall is also to escape, momentarily, from the onslaught of everyday life and work. Fabulous for people-watching, as well as London s coolest party venue, the Turbine Hall is first and foremost a vast and hugely challenging project space for contemporary art. 1 The Tate Modern is the result of a transformation of the Bank Power Station into an art gallery. Created in 2000, the Tate Modern displays the national collection of international modern art, which is part of the Tate collection. 2 The power station included a huge turbine hall that became an entrance with ramped access, and a display place for large-scale projects. The retention of the original Turbine Hall, spectacular though it is, suggests that a key goal of this project was to create a landmark building, an imposing structure which would ensure an unforgettable experience for the casual visitor. 3 The massive site-specific interventions that have been made in the Turbine hall since 2000 are part of The Unilever Series, which are an annual commission that invites a different artist per year to create a work of art especially for the space. 4 Until now, a range of contemporary artists have been interrogating and re-staging the turbine hall, for example: Louise Bourgeois, Olafur Elliasson, Carsten Holler, Doris Salcedo, Tacita Dean etc Francis Morris (2006:21) in Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p The Building in [Accessed at 16/12/2011] 3 Diarmuid, C. in Art and Thought (2003, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing) p The Unilever Series in [Accessed at 16/12/2011] 5 Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) 1

2 Adrian Searle wrote about the Turbine Hall and the series, and he associates them to spectacle. The appeal of the spectacle for a singular and gobsmacking novelty, is hard to resist. The Turbine Hall is the most public museum space anywhere and is spectacular in itself. Being here is like being in a stupid movie we have already seen. To show here is a test of an artist s capacity and ingenuity. No one accepts the commission lightly, and no one can get away with going trough the motions. This is exhilarating. The series has demonstrated the limits and capabilities of artists, of their work and ideas. In an age of spectacle, it continues to put art itself to the test. 6 So, if the Turbine Hall s series have been provoking a sensation of spectacle, how is the current display of Tacita Dean s video installation relating to this? And in an age of spectacle, how is art being experienced in the Turbine Hall? I will mention some of the previous interventions to help the development of my argument. The turbine hall is different from the rest of Tate s display places. It allows the visitor to actually interact physically with the work of art, rather then just visually. Here the art is experienced not as a discreet acting out of perception, but through a heightened consciousness of one s body installed in relation to the object in space. 7 Furthermore, the visitor can sit, picnic and lay on the floor, which are behaviours that normally are not permitted in the typical museum. 8 These behaviours motivate visitors to have conversations with each other about what they are experiencing, and actually engage with the work together. This is an important feature of contemporary art: Artworks are often experienced and made sense of through dialogue with other visitors. ( ) Contemporary art has been directed toward the social sphere, demanding participation and interaction. 9 The Turbine Hall environment stimulates communication between visitors; it is a place for social and artistic engagement. 6 Searle, A. The Tate Modern at 10 in [Accessed at 18/12/2011] 7 Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p Pierroux, P. Communicating Art in Museums: Language Concepts in Art Education, Journal of Museum Education, 28(1):3-8 2

3 According to Hilde Hein, the museum is an agent that mediates experience publicly presiding over and bringing into focus objects and ideas, ( ) to make them accessible as private experience. 10 The Unilever Series, have been providing a range of different experiences for the visitors, about various issues. The Turbine Hall, through its open programmatic variety, appears to allow an arena of experiences, observations and narratives to take place. 11 Louise Bourgeois was the first artist to participate at The Unilever Series in She also signalled the start of a sustained intersection between the Turbine Hall and the space of contemporary art practice that takes as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context. 12 Her installation was called I Do, I Undo and I Redo and consisted on a giant spider and three steel towers, at the top of which was a platform. The visitors could climb the stairs to go up the towers and sit, stand, talk and look around before going down again. After this, the possibility had been established that the Turbine Hall could function as a site in which an expanded art public would henceforth be constituted via managed and random practices of embodied sociality, self-conscious performance and mutual self-regard. 13 Bourgeois provided the visitors a chance to encounter themselves and to spectate upon one another, and these actions carried on to the next interventions. Another commission for the Tate s Turbine Hall was The Weather Project by Olafur Elliasson, which was about our relationship with weather. The artist used mirrors, light and mist to create an extraordinary sensory environment in the Turbine Hall. This installation radically altered the space as a means of exploring ideas about 10 Hein, H. Public Art: Thinking Museums Differently (2006, Oxford: AltaMira Press) 11 Dean, C. in Curating Architecture and the City (2009, London: Routledege) p Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p

4 perception, experience and representation. 14 Visitors sat and lay down on the gallery floor, the better to see their own reflection in the huge overhead mirrors. The artist or the curators did not plan this action; this was the way that the visitors found to understand the work. Olafur considers that the most successful aspect of his project was this interaction between visitors to create shapes in the overhead mirrors. 15 Marr described the play of sociality produced by The Weather Project, as a moment when contemporary art folded into mass experience, if not an act of collective worship then perhaps a silent, optical rave. 16 In this exhibition, the visitor does not feel the strictness of the white cube gallery and it is free to embrace the installation without any restrictions The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson in [Accessed at 20/12/2011] 15 Matthew Collings, et al. Tate Modern is 10! A Culture Show Special BBC TWO, 25 May 2010, 6.00pm, [Accessed at 6/01/2012] 16 Marr, A. found in, Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p.168 4

5 Figure 1 Olafur Eliasson The Weather Project 2003, Tate Modern ( Tate, London) Three years after Eliasson s sun, Carsten Holler s Test Site provided a totally ludic experience of contemporary art in The artist installed three slides that spiralled through the Turbine Hall, from the upper levels of the building down to the floor. The idea of this piece was to experiment with the sensation and spectacle of sliding within the incongruous setting of an art museum. 19 Hugh Dichmont wrote that it is in sliding that the work truly takes form. 20 However, Holler considers that the visitor don't have to go down the slides to appreciate this artwork. For him, is both the 18 Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge)p Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) 20 Dishmont, H. Carsten Höller's Test Site in [Accessed at 20/12/2011] 5

6 visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the 'inner spectacle' experienced by the sliders themselves that constitutes the piece. 21 Therefore, the visitor can participate in these interventions or just watch other visitors because of architecture of the building: throughout the spaces abutting the Turbine Hall, visitors are presented with a series of opportunities for spectating upon one another: whether looking up, from the floor to the hall, at the glass fronted corridors and viewing platforms above, or looking down from these vantages, on the crowd bellow. 22 Figure 2: Carsten Holler, Test Site, 2007 Tate Modern Another important commission was Doris Salcedo Shibboleth. This work consisted in a 150-metre long crack on the floor throughout the Turbine Hall. With this crack, 21 The Unilever Series: Carsten Höller in [Accessed at 20/12/2011] 22 Diarmuid, C. in Art and Thought (2003, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing) p

7 Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. She wants us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves. 23 Nicolas Bourriard considers that the visitors, because of their reaction to it, did not treat this work with seriousness. 24 Curious visitors walked along the crack, stepped into it, lay down next to it, jumped over it trying to understand its meaning. 25 But Sheena Wagstaff, chief curator, argues that, even though people are playing along the crack they can understand the message that it is implying, because it was such a violent act (opening the floor of the Turbine Hall that is). 26 Helen Rees Leahy explain that the Turbine Hall has never been a public space of quiet reflection, and visitors response to Shibboleth showed that the work was too ambiguous to resist its own transformation into another event by the body-space relations enacted within it. 27 The visitor participation is something that the curator and artist cannot predict, and sometimes some misunderstandings can occur. But as Sheena Wagstaff considers, the crack can be explored in a relaxed way and still communicate the intended message. Salcedo s crack became a source of fascination. The Tate s refusal of explaining how the crack was made fuelled speculation among visitors and media The Unilever Series: Doris Salcedo in [Accessed at 27/12/2011] 24 Matthew Collings, et al. Tate Modern is 10! A Culture Show Special BBC TWO, 25 May 2010, 6.00pm, [Accessed at 6/01/2012] 25 Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p Matthew Collings, et al. Tate Modern is 10! A Culture Show Special BBC TWO, 25 May 2010, 6.00pm, [Accessed at 6/01/2012] 27 Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p Leahy, H. In Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) p

8 Based on these interventions, we can think about the Turbine Hall as a place where spectacle occurs. Jessica Morgan, curator of Carsten Holler s Test Site installation, considers that the phenomenological experience of scale of the Turbine Hall and the evaluation of the space, is indisputably linked to spectaculariasation and expansionism. Art is being experienced in a different way; the Turbine Hall is providing a new relationship with art. When inside, visitors become actors in a constantly performed space or staged field. 29 Most museum theorists agree that today the museum has borrowed from the cinema and the theme park to become a spectacle that engages all the senses, whether staged to evoke an aesthetic experience, a historical context, or an interactive learning environment. 30 The spectacle factor is present in the Turbine Hall interventions, and this attracts curious visitors that want to be amazed and experience art in a different way. Furthermore, the Turbine Hall is showing the visitor the multiple possibilities of contemporary art and motivating him to enjoy it and learn about it. Andreas Huysen considers that the museum s role as a site for an elitist conservation, a bastion of tradition and high culture, gave way to the museum as mass medium, as a site of spectacular mise-en-scène and operatic exuberance. 31 The Unliver Series are definitely proving that the museum as site of spectacle is a positive way of bringing people and art together. Nicolas Bourriaud, states in his book Relational Aesthetics that Art is a state of encounter. 32 We can see that the commissions of the Turbine Hall are making this possible, the engagement between public and artwork and also relations between visitors. However, the current commission by Tacita Dean is quite different from the previous interventions. FILM is an 11-minute silent 35mm film projected onto a gigantic 29 Dean, C. in Curating Architecture and the City (2009, London: Routledege) 30 Marstine, J. New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (2006, Willey-Blackwell) 31 Huysen A. in Re-Imagine the Museum: beyond the mausoleum (2004, Routledge) p Bourriaud, N. Relational Aesthetics (2002, Les presses du reel) 8

9 white monolith standing 13 metres tall at the end of a darkened Turbine Hall. 33 It is the first work in The Unilever Series devoted to the moving image, and it is a testament to the analogue film-making techniques as opposed to digital. 34 But one must argue that this piece may not be as striking as the others, in a way that the visitor does not physically engage with it, and in comparison to the previous interventions, that literally filled up the room, FILM is just a projection in the back of the Turbine Hall. In his review for The Independent, Charles Darwent says that the problem of Tacita Dean s intervention is the size of it. 35 However, Richard Dorment wrote a review about Dean s intervention and he argues that, FILM is not one of the greats in the series but it s a successful attempt to grapple with that impossible space by grabbing the viewer s attention and holding it long enough to make us want to return to see it all over again. Choosing the back of Turbine Hall has the advantage that the walk from the empty entrance down the ramp builds up the viewer s expectation of finding something extraordinary in the darkness behind the staircase. 36 The architecture of the Turbine Hall lifted Tacita s project to a different level, and when we arrive to the back of the Hall we can feel a relaxed environment, with people sitting on the floor talking or playing with the shadows of the projection or, like me, just watching the video and taking pictures. Inspite of not being a massive installation, this piece can be as interesting as the previous interventions, and although the visitor will not engage physically with it, the content of the projection is addictive (as Richard Dorment said). Furthermore, Tacita s intervention may not use the massive space of the Turbine Hall like the 33 The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean in [Accessed at 9/12/2011] 34 The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean in [Accessed at 9/12/2011] 35 Darwent, C. Tacita Dean takes on the vast space of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and triumphs in magnificent, amusing style in [Accessed at 10/12/2011] 36 Dorment, R. Tacita Dean: FILM at the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, review Tate-Modern-review.html [Accessed at 10/12/2011] 9

10 previous artists, but she was able to relate her work with it: I chose to have the film happen inside the notional cinematic space of the Turbine Hall itself: Turbine Hall as filmstrip, and conflate the imagined with the real in the wonder space that is experimental film. 37 Figure 3: Tacita Dean FILM, 2011, Tate Modern Museums have tried to shake their quiet, clean well-behaved reputation and have explored a wide variety of methods and subject matter to expand audience, to become more populist in appeal, and to engage an increasingly digital and interactive age. A new generation of museum professionals has attempted to reinvent the museum, to bring it into the twenty first century as a place more identified with other recreational venues for leisure time, a place more identified with providing opportunities for celebration than contemplation Tate Modern, The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean Film Bruce, C. in. New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (2006, Willey-Blackwell) p

11 The Tate Modern s Unilever Series is a great example of this reinvention of the museum that Chris Bruce is explaining in the previous quote. The Turbine Hall allows the visitor to explore the space without restrictions and motivates him to interact with it. What gives the Tate Modern such expansiveness is the shell of the converted power station it inhabits. This has been secured by sacrificing a large proportion of its potential exhibition space to the retained vertical thrust of its original Turbine Hall. This is no small decision. It is spectacular. 39 The massiveness of the Turbine Hall combined with the artist s creativity makes this space something worth visiting. The Turbine Hall provides a space for artists to create something different and exciting for the viewer, allowing him to get to know contemporary art in an unexpected and engaging way. It is a space that promotes interaction with the visitor in a different way, different from the traditional museum. Even Tacita Dean s intervention, being just a video projection, is something that can be experienced differently because of the environment that the massive Turbine Hall provides; or because of its location inside the hall; or because of its scale. When in the Turbine Hall, one can get sit back and enjoy the show or actually be in the show. The Turbine Hall is a multidisciplinary space, where people can socialize with each other, learn with each other and enjoy some fantastic installation artworks. Matthew Collings says, in his documentary about Tate Modern, that the institution had succeed in generating an audience for installation art, which used to be a totally narrowed thing enjoyed by only a few art insiders. 40 Marta Rodrigues 39 Diarmuid, C. in Art and Thought (2003, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing) p Matthew Collings, et al. Tate Modern is 10! A Culture Show Special BBC TWO, 25 May 2010, 6.00pm, [Accessed at 6/01/2012] 11

12 Bibliography Arnold D. and Iversen, M. Art and Thought (2003, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing) Bourriaud, N. Relational Aesthetics (2002, Les presses du reel) Chaplin, S. and Stara, A. Curating Architecture and the City (2009, London: Routledege) Darwent, C. Tacita Dean takes on the vast space of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and triumphs in magnificent, amusing style in [Accessed at 10/12/2011] Dishmont, H. Carsten Höller's Test Site in [Accessed at 20/12/2011] Dorment, R. Tacita Dean: FILM at the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, review [Accessed at 10/12/2011] Dudley, S. Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations (2010, New York: Routledge) Hein, H. Public Art: Thinking Museums Differently (2006, Oxford: AltaMira Press) Marstine, J. New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (2006, Willey- Blackwell) Matthew Collings, et al. Tate Modern is 10! A Culture Show Special BBC TWO, 25 May 2010, 6.00pm, 12

13 [Accessed at 6/01/2012] Pierroux, P. Communicating Art in Museums: Language Concepts in Art Education, Journal of Museum Education, 28(1):3-8 Searle, A. The Tate Modern at 10 in [Accessed at 18/12/2011] Tate Modern, The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean Film 2011 panfleto?? The Building in [Accessed at 16/12/2011] The Unilever Series in [Accessed at 16/12/2011] The Unilever Series: Carsten Höller in [Accessed at 20/12/2011] The Unilever Series: Doris Salcedo in [Accessed at 27/12/2011] The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson in [Accessed at 20/12/2011] The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean in [Accessed at 9/12/2011] Witcomb, A. Re-Imagine the Museum: beyond the mausoleum (2004, Routledge) 13