The time of film itself

Tate Modern's Unilever Series presents art works in the Turbine Hall. It's a difficult challenge no doubt, but artists are supposed to be gifted with imagination, so it's more than a little disappointing that only one effort so far, Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project, really managed to do something exciting with that huge space. Since then we've had the bathos of Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, aka The Crack (my take here), Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds, plus a few more.....not forgetting, of course, that piano.

With Miroslav Bolka's How It Is - coming soon after Carsten Höller's Slides - I suggested that we might be seeing a the birth of a new art movement, Funfairism, where artists try to emulate the feel of an amusement park; but for the intellectual classes who'd never dream of going to Alton Towers. A bit of excitement, something out of the ordinary: the gallery and the funfair after all are in the same  business nowadays, looking to brighten up our leisure time, so it's surely no surprise when artists faced with the challenge of the Turbine Hall look to the playground for inspiration.

Well, now we have the latest in the Series, from Tacita Dean, and I think I may be on to something. Not that that's the artist's intention - she takes herself far too seriously - but that's the way it's turned out.

It's an 11 minute film - called, dramatically, FILM - made on analogue 35mm film, with those perforations down the sides. It therefore continues that old avant-garde tradition whereby grainy blurred out-of-focus film using yesterday's technology signifies integrity and a subversion of all that boring linear well-produced commercial tat. It's projected on a large screen at the far end of the Turbine Hall.

Having sat right through it I can say that it is, on the whole, remarkably uninteresting. Some trees, some fountains, some colours flashing on and off: you could perhaps excuse it all if it were the effort of a first year student on a Media Studies course, but surely not for a leading artist on such a prestigious project. 

The actual artwork may be poor, but it's with the accompanying text that Dean shows herself to be a modern master:

Film is time made manifest: time as physical length - 24 frames per second, 16 frames in a 35mm foot. It is still images beguiled into movement by movement and is eternally magical. The time in my films is the time of film itself. I cut my films on a Steenbeck cutting table. I always work alone. I physically splice the print and stick it together with tape. It is these days and weeks of concentrated labour which are at the heart of my creative process, and how I mould and make the films. Film is my working material and I need the stuff of film like a painter needs paint.

I chose to make an experimental film inside the camera, and so revive spontaneity and risk. I wanted to show film as film can be, and use no post-production other than my normal editing process and the grading that happens in the lab. I chose to have the film happen inside the notional cinematic space of the Turbine Hall: Turbine Hall as film strip, and conflate the imagined with the real in the wonder space that is experimental film.

FILM is a visual poem. I found its rhythm and metre from the material itself, relying not only on the images I had, but on what is normally considered waste: the picture fading at the end of a roll, the shimmering metamorphosis of a colour filter change and the flash frames of over-exposure as the camera stops and starts. FILM is about film, and in the end I let the material's intrinsic magic be my guide.

"The time in my films is the time of film itself." Um...no. Sorry. But I do like it when people conflate the imagined with the real.

We get the message, anyway. We're told that this is an important work of art put together after a lengthy creative process - and that's what matters, even if we may not be able to see any actual worth in the end result.

Even Times art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston, normally effusive in her praise of the latest modern master, is less than impressed (£):

FILM is a eulogy to the medium in which it is made. It is a homage to the all-but-dead processes of a pre-digital age in which the unspooling filmstrip presents images which have been created inside a camera (rather than through post-production practices), complete with all their fadeouts and light flashes, their scratches, splicings and blurs. Dean needs “the stuff of film as a painter needs the stuff of paint”, she says. Her piece is a cry in an increasingly digitised age to preserve the processes — to continue manufacturing the materials and funding the laboratories — that make projects such as this latest Tate commission possible.

The trouble is that the main point of this piece is also its main problem. The message is conveyed at the cost of artistic content. Those intimately familiar with the medium of film may tune in to the complexities of Dean’s passionate contribution. But the broader public are more likely to feel flummoxed.

What on earth is it all about? The mind scurries hither and thither trying to make sense of fragments. But, for all that flashes of understanding might momentarily dawn, In the main it remains an enigma, only to be made sense of when accompanying texts have been read. Only then does the work start to accrue the richness and resonance, the sense of meditative profundity and playful subtlety which have become the hallmark of Dean’s until-now most impressive oeuvre.

We note that Rachel herself, of course, appreciates the "the richness and resonance, the sense of meditative profundity and playful subtlety", but only after reading the accompanying text. And she's a sensitive and intelligent observer, obviously. The rest of us - the broader public - may not be so perspicacious.

There's a long bench set in front of the screen, for the audience, 40 yards or so back. When I was there it was almost entirely filled with mothers and toddlers. The mothers were sitting down, chatting, prams parked to the side, while the toddlers raced up and down to the screen, screaming and shouting, posing in the glare of the projector. It was like a playground. It was a playground. The antics of the kids were certainly more entertaining that the action on the screen.

So Funfairism triumphs again. It was clearly not Dean's intention, but that's how it's turned out: an excitingly different environment for toddlers to amuse themselves, while their parents feel good about going to an art gallery rather than mixing it with the common people at the playground in the local park. With space for children to play being daily eroded by the pace of modern life, we have here a colourful background for youngsters to romp around and play in safety, while their grateful parents can relax and put their feet up.

Perhaps it's the nature of the Turbine Hall. Perhaps, as I suggested before, they should just forget about all these artworks, and turn it into a permanent play space and funfair.

Comments

[Richard Powell]

It comes as no surprise that “FILM” lacks the essential cinematic quality of watchability. There’s often a gulf between the aspirations of would-be works of art, and what the viewer actually experiences.

There are lots of examples. Last week I saw “Edge of the World”, an installation at the Amos Anderson Museum in Helsinki. Here, with the aid of high technology, one can experience alternative realities.

Except one doesn’t. One straps on the backpack containing a laptop (10kg if it’s an ounce), dons some virtual-reality specs and launches oneself on a darkened labyrinth where one stumbles around, constantly in search of the next door handle. Perhaps a sense of the confusion is given by quoting the Finnish – “epäilemään oman havintokyvyn rajallisuudesta” (to doubt the limitations of one’s own ability to perceive).

Except that one can perceive perfectly well, but for the limitations of the darkness, the virtual-reality headset and specs, and the bloody backpack. Like being on night patrol in Helmand, except that you're in an art gallery in Helsinki. On my emergence, the lads who had briefed me, installed the sodding backpack &c, asked me how I had got on. There was a long silence, while I tried to think of something both truthful and not discouraging. Words failed me. One of them helped me out by saying that many people didn’t get much from it, because they focused on negotiating the maze, rather than appreciating the marvels of virtual reality. Whereupon I bucked up a little, and said the Crazy House at Helsinki funfair - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h88KY2STGnU - had done much more to challenge my perceptions. It's been there since 1961, and at least half the population of Finland must have been through it by now.

So there we are: "art" that’s 50 years behind the leisure industry, requires public subsidy, and offers less in terms of both pleasure and originality. I wish it wasn't that way.

I don't want to put people off the AAM - the pictures on show in the other galleries make the €8 worth paying.

Your blog is truly excellent, by the way.

[Richard Powell]

That should of course be "havaintokyvyn rajallisuudesta". Apologies.

[Mick H]

"Art that’s 50 years behind the leisure industry, requires public subsidy, and offers less in terms of both pleasure and originality." Yep, that about sums it up.

And thanks for the kind words.