Art
Oct 8, 2017 19:30:14 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2017 19:30:14 GMT -5
Good morning to everyone reading 'Serious Topics', 'The Third' and all social media websites online today. 'The Guardian' leads today with some editorial comment on Tate Modern’s swings: more to art than Instagram.
The latest Turbine Hall installation offers visitors a turn on the swings. But its selfie-friendly popular appeal shouldn’t blind us to quieter, more thoughtful experiences.
"With its latest Turbine Hall installation, unveiled last week, Tate Modern has fulfilled its destiny by becoming, literally, a playground. The Danish artists’ collective Superflex has filled the cavernous space with a carpet meant to remind viewers of British banknotes, a wrecking-ball-like pendulum that oscillates over visitors’ heads and, most notably, sets of three-seater swings. This is soft play for grown-ups. It will be very popular. How could it not be? To submit to the joy of the swings is to become a child again – to experience the rush of the air, the feeling of weightlessness, the sensation of flying. It is impossible to be serious, or cross, on a swing. It is possible to swing contemplatively, on one’s own. It is possible to swing intimately, in a pair. It is possible to swing wildly, with companions daring each other ever higher. It is not possible to swing pompously.
The artists have nodded explicitly towards Olafur Eliasson’s Turbine Hall work of 2003, The Weather Project, in which the space became engulfed in fog and the sickly light of a sodium sun, causing “an almost psychotropic transformation of human social behaviour” among its visitors, as the Guardian noted at the time. That installation, three years after Tate Modern’s opening, was probably the moment when the full potential of that great space was realised, at least in the sense that it brought the museum a new kind of popularity. Visitors came to watch themselves and others in the vast mirror that was suspended from the museum’s ceiling. They behaved almost as if they were at a music festival. Carsten Höller’s Test Site of 2006, in which the hall was filled with helter-skelter-like slides, is another example, though arguably Höller’s elegant snaking forms had more to say as sculpture than Superflex’s One Two Three Swing!.
The current work, is, like its predecessors, social and participatory, immersive and fun. Unlike those by Eliasson and Höller, it has been born into the age of social media. It is endlessly Instagrammable. It will provide the backdrop for a million selfies. There’s nothing wrong with that, in itself. There’s nothing wrong with fun, either, and Superflex’s work will bring precious joyful moments to visitors. But one should be cautious. We live in an age when the success of the arts is frequently judged by footfall. Funders like bums on seats or millions counted through the doors of a museum.
Those who care for our institutions are under pressure to prove that they provide inclusive, non-elitist experiences. That’s right, of course: the whole point of a publicly funded arts regime is the ability to welcome audiences regardless of income, gender, class, race or age. No one should be excluded. But counting up members of an audience does not tell you anything like the full story. It excludes the small theatre company, the composer-led classical-music ensemble, the experimental dance company – any organisation or artist who does not work at scale, or whose output demands an intimate focus or is simply too demanding ever to have the popular appeal of an adult playground. The enjoyment and pleasure to be gleaned from a turn on Tate Modern’s swings should not overwhelm the fact that there are other kinds of art: those that don’t involve the audience in any obvious way at all, except in a moment (or lifetime) of quiet, unshowy, thoughtful engagement."
The artists have nodded explicitly towards Olafur Eliasson’s Turbine Hall work of 2003, The Weather Project, in which the space became engulfed in fog and the sickly light of a sodium sun, causing “an almost psychotropic transformation of human social behaviour” among its visitors, as the Guardian noted at the time. That installation, three years after Tate Modern’s opening, was probably the moment when the full potential of that great space was realised, at least in the sense that it brought the museum a new kind of popularity. Visitors came to watch themselves and others in the vast mirror that was suspended from the museum’s ceiling. They behaved almost as if they were at a music festival. Carsten Höller’s Test Site of 2006, in which the hall was filled with helter-skelter-like slides, is another example, though arguably Höller’s elegant snaking forms had more to say as sculpture than Superflex’s One Two Three Swing!.
The current work, is, like its predecessors, social and participatory, immersive and fun. Unlike those by Eliasson and Höller, it has been born into the age of social media. It is endlessly Instagrammable. It will provide the backdrop for a million selfies. There’s nothing wrong with that, in itself. There’s nothing wrong with fun, either, and Superflex’s work will bring precious joyful moments to visitors. But one should be cautious. We live in an age when the success of the arts is frequently judged by footfall. Funders like bums on seats or millions counted through the doors of a museum.
Those who care for our institutions are under pressure to prove that they provide inclusive, non-elitist experiences. That’s right, of course: the whole point of a publicly funded arts regime is the ability to welcome audiences regardless of income, gender, class, race or age. No one should be excluded. But counting up members of an audience does not tell you anything like the full story. It excludes the small theatre company, the composer-led classical-music ensemble, the experimental dance company – any organisation or artist who does not work at scale, or whose output demands an intimate focus or is simply too demanding ever to have the popular appeal of an adult playground. The enjoyment and pleasure to be gleaned from a turn on Tate Modern’s swings should not overwhelm the fact that there are other kinds of art: those that don’t involve the audience in any obvious way at all, except in a moment (or lifetime) of quiet, unshowy, thoughtful engagement."
The latest Turbine Hall installation offers visitors a turn on the swings. But its selfie-friendly popular appeal shouldn’t blind us to quieter, more thoughtful experiences.