'How It Is' by Miroslaw Balka

[blahflowers]

Tate Turbine Hall- 'How It Is' by Miroslaw Balka
Originally uploaded by Loz Flowers.

In an almost unprecedented break with tradition I find myself actually liking the latest Turbine Hall installation at Tate Modern. Since the sun was taken away I've generally only managed to work my way up to not violently hating what various artists have done with the place, Rachel Whiteread's 'I'm Really Not Trying Am I/One Trick Pony' will live in infamy, or there's Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's piece 'Stealing Bits From Other Artists Works That Are Popular With the Public' last year. But Balka's 'How It Is' is a simple idea well executed, namely a big empty box that is so dark that you can barely see your hand in front of your face once you step inside. Immediately you are forced to navigate by sound, the sound of other people's footsteps on the floor, their nervous giggles and sounds. I want to go back there with a broom so I can go underneath, hit the floor above me and make fifty visiting tourists soil themselves.

Technically speaking it's breaking the unwritten 'rules' for the Turbine Hall in that, like Whiteread, it's not really using the space available. While it is refreshing to see the Tate continue their tradition of installations that break health and safety laws and will probably lead to them being sued, as they were by dullards on the slides or who got stuck in Doris Salcedo's crack I was imagining beforehand that the entire hall would be enclosed and the lights turned off, but I suppose the Tate will only go so far in the name of art.

Comments

[janinazew.livejournal.com]

That's good to hear but I wish they would commission something that actually fills the space again. Whiteread's wasn't high enough so it sucked, Salcedo's was conceptually good but the first half of it was too small, Gonzalez-Foerster's was -yep- a rip off. This sounds ace but why put it in the hall? Whhhhyyyyyy? Hell, why doesn't someone just hang very long ribbons from the f****** ceiling?

[blahflowers.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the Rothschild in the Duveen Gallery along at Tate Britain?

[janinazew.livejournal.com]

I haven't but intend to