- Venue
- Tate Modern
- Location
- London
Tacita Dean’s Film is the current Unilever installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine hall.
I’m not usually one for video art, I often find it hit or miss but this one was a a hit for me.
It inhabits the space with an almost monolitic quality, making me think of Arthur C Clarke’s novel and Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The screens size in the space gives the projection epic proportions, something I found I only wanted to increase by sitting down and dropping my eye level. Like a cinema screen yet disproportionate, it fit well with the idea of portraying physical film stock. Showing not only the imagery but also the bits we don’t see when film goes through a projector.
The scale also reflected iconic aspects to the building it inhabits namely the central chimney, made more obvious by the almost constant imagery that undercut the whole piece. This repeating imagery may have been part of the Tate Modern’s chimney, it was difficult to be sure. While the architecture was unmistakably from the Tate Modern, it’s exact location was difficult to ascertain. This worked better as while tied in wonderfully with the space, it didn’t specify so loudly that it drowned out the other imagery.
This other imagery included added sections of moving image, often cut into the still background, as well as a combination of shapes and colour changes that subtly altered the nature of the film. One might expect it to say something about the nature of film, through the history and conventions of cinema (our most recognisable way into the format of film). In fact it was far more visceral than that, looking at the nature and physicality of film.
It’s power came in the almost hypnotic influence it had on the space, something I’ve not felt since Olafur Elliasson’s The Weather Project. From the ground it was immersive, but even from the bridge on the second level it was powerful, not only in it’s presence but in the ability to people watch those so caught up in it. People that become (to return to a sci-fi reference) but black silhouettes against a bright backlight reminding me of the visiting aliens from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
