- Venue
- Tate Modern
- Location
- London
(If you would like to read the review of the exhibition only, please skip the first 3 paragraphs, which help to situate the author within this review)
I am always cautious when writing a review of what I think of as the big “Hollywood-esque” art productions, for several reasons.
First and foremost – it always a big rush. Well-known journalists get invited to the private views (to which most of us, independent writers, don’t) and churn out reviews for their respective newspapers before the exhibition even opens. This also means that it is almost redundant to write yet another review. You’d think that everything has been said and if I have nothing new to add, is there any point in writing for the sake of writing? What is then the purpose of writing about art?
I’ll make another parenthesis to say that I was surprisingly unimpressed by the many reviews that I read, mostly concerned with comparing Dean’s installation to previous Unilever commissions without actually talking about her work, or offering a reductionist approach to the formal complexities of her film. Either way, it seems to me that the lack of a deeper analysis of Dean’s is either the result of a lack of knowledge by the writer or a fear that the audience is plainly stupid.
Finally, if I’m writing a review I try not to read any other reviews prior to visiting the exhibition, as I’d rather form my own opinions thank you very much. But when these reviews crop-up where you least expect them (eg: the free daily papers on the underground) it’s impossible not to. So, with a clouded judgement and the monumental task of finding something new to say about the work, I set out to visit Tacita Dean’s Unilver Series commission at the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern.
(If you’re interested in the review ONLY, please start reading here)
As redundant as it sounds, Film is a film about film. Other reviewers either commended her or criticised her for making a piece of work that explores the formalities of the medium, when more often than not this kind of work proves to be a bore (Morgan Fischer being one of the big exceptions). Tacita Dean’s work is another exception.
Much has been said about Film being a homage or elegy to the demise of film. Dean herself wrote an article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/22/tacita-dean-16mm-film) prior to this commission being completed about the Soho Film Lab’s refusal to print any more 16mm film and there is no denying that this massive installation certainly reads as a celebration of the medium’s possibilities. The giant screen has transformed the turbine hall into an IMAX-style cinema, with the image being projected on a portrait format on the screen, whose verticality is emphasized by the movement of balloons (downwards) and escalators (upwards).
The first thing you notice are the static sprocket holes, a fixed reminder of the medium in question, followed by the colour filters and the seemingly random cuts that show one image after another, a waterfall after a frog, then an escalator before a Mondrian-styled colour filled screen.
I can see however that there is more to it than has been said so far. Dean also said that “Film is visual poem”. And indeed it is. Yes, the cuts, colour filters and superimpositions are all there – but this is much more than an experimentation of the medium. It is poetic in the way the images are subtle and metaphorical. No set meaning is attached to each visual representation and the viewer is invited to read the work in a non-linear way. There is no fixed narrative and each image is subtly linked to the previous one. Unexpectedly for a moving image piece, the pictures appear quite static which adds to its aesthetically pleasing and soothing qualities.
Further to this, there are two things whose absence from the film makes it more powerful. In such a monumental installation, the only human presence is the audience. This coupled with the lack of sound (there is no voice or even ambient sounds) force the viewer to engage with the image per se. I am not talking of the image’s formal qualities but of the power of the image to construct meaning, a power that can be nullified by the imposition of sound or the affect of the human figure.
Dean has made no compromises and it’s paid off.
