Ghostly

After doing what I needed to do work-wise today I went into London to meet my friend Clare at the Tate Modern. The latest commissioned piece in the Turbine Hall is called 'These Associations' by Tino Seghal which consists of people interacting with the space and the viewers, using a mixture of loose choreography, conversation and singing (there's a better explanation of it here and the Tate press release about it here).

We heard it described on the radio last week and I must admit I hated the sound of it - in particular the thought of being engaged in pseudy conversation by a total stranger sounded like a complete turn-off. However, although I didn't go down to get really close to it on the floor of the Turbine Hall, I did watch it for 5 or 10 minutes from the next floor up, and from that distance, although it was still pretty pseudy, it was much more accessible. Sometimes they were in the dark, other times the lighting went up (like here), sometimes they were silent, other times they were singing/humming (which was pretty ethereal sounding), sometimes they were still, sometimes moving in a choreographed way, sometimes running. Here they were doing a very deliberate movement, one step then the other leg joined up, then another step and the other leg joined up (if that makes sense), I liked the ghostly sense of movement in this picture. I'm still trying to figure out though what I really think about it as a whole (and whether I think it is actually art or not).

We also took a look at the Edvard Munch exhibition while we were there, that's well worth a look.