If only it was on for longer, I thought as I exited BMW Tate Live: Ten Days Six Nights at Tate Modern this morning. This ten-day extravaganza of installations, performances, film, music and choreography, is also a huge missed opportunity, given it finishes before the Easter holidays, despite the mammoth efforts of their curatorial team.
Since opening the new Switch House last summer, performance has been right at the heart of Tate Modern’s refreshed offering. Staged in the unique space of The Tanks, this exhibition celebrates them coming into their own, proving that art can create participation, and can be experimental, yet informal, playful and fun.
So what can you expect to see in daylight hours?
Isabel Lewis will be taking over the Tanks with her site specific installation, which unfolds between the Lobby and the East Tank as the days go by. Dotted with strange plants and impromptu dancers, she aims to host any visitors with everything from music, to food and scent, ensuring that you don’t leave without taking part in some way, shape or form. Her beguiling piece Occasions 2017, was housed in the East Tank today, providing an even greater expanse of foliage and choreography, to the backdrop of Fred Moten and Wu Tsang’s night-time musical and poetic accompaniment.
Moten and Tsang also provide a superb contribution to daytime proceedings, with their interactive installation Gravitational Feel. Using fabric and sound to trigger ‘chance events’, they’ve filled the rear of the Transformer Galleries with knotted fabric rope, suspended from the ceiling on moveable heads, inviting visitors to touch and animate the strands by passing beneath and between.
CAMP, a collaborative studio founded in Mumbai in 2007 are also sharing the space, demonstrating the power of a ‘window’ in a range of interesting ways. From their CCTV spy films taken at the Arndale Centre, to their oversized LED representation of an overheard conversations, their work challenges us to think about the role of electricity and surveillance in our modern lives. Particularly fun is Windscreen 2002, whereby standing in the space between the framed paper squares and the wall fan, will quickly reveal you as the subject of the work.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is Fujiko Nakaya’s immersive fog sculpture, taking pride of place outside on the first floor terrace. The daughter of an inventor of the artificial snowflake, it’s ironic that her work now centres entirely on creating fog. The misty water vapour cuts a ghostly figure of those who choose to interact, creating something similar to Gotham City from the impressive skyline behind (complete with shrieks of terror by water-soaked bystanders).
What’s great about Ten Days Six Nights is that for once, visiting families can put aside their usual feelings of FOMO. With so much of the fun happening in the day, you’re bound to chance upon something fun, even if you’re dropping in as part of a random South Bank mosey. As the name suggests, however, there are also six nights of spectacular work, so if you’re lucky enough to get a night off, re-live the nineties, with Lorenzo Senni’s laser and sound installations, focussing on the hypnotic and repetitive aspects of trance music.
Arts Aloud 