in the turbine hall again
by uzwi
I realised I had missed the point. I realised I was watching a whimsy. It was a genuinely cosy catastrophe. This exhibit isn’t failed. The point of it was to install something innocuous. I didn’t get that for a time. The key was in the sounds I didn’t think I could hear properly: the rain, the thunder, the atmosphere that–as I thought–failed to make itself present. In fact these are the sounds of a storm that has already passed–if it was ever, really, in a state of actual occurrence.
The Turbine Hall has turned into somewhere to wait out a little rain. While you’re there you can amuse yourself with a catastrophe. Shop for the condition of being a survivor. Shop for an art artifact with a catastrophe style. Shop for a book in which a catastrophe is happening–illustratively and meaningfully, even poignantly–to someone else. You can pick up a book, leaf through it, decide not to buy it and move on out of the “refuge” when the rain stops. You can continue your walk along the Embankment in the sunshine. You can shop for a disaster the way you shop for a print.
Meanwhile, outside this context, the disaster is being not so much averted as inverted. Disaster means change & change is hope. But soon any sense of change will be past. Everything will be back to normal. There will never really be a disaster, only the sign of it. To put it another way, we move through disasters daily now: they never leave a mark on us–except, briefly, to “make us think”. The Turbine Hall celebrates a safety–a stasis–which enables us to toy with the loss of it. That’s what’s so offensive.
I thought it was whimsical too, but it’s crap either way.
MJH, we went to the turbine after seeing Rothko, which was so overpowering I had to walk out early. Couldn’t quite get the mix of the uber self-conscious (or aware, C?) gallery goers standing next to such engulfingly painful paintings. The turbine was like a wrung out j-cloth after this. The opening paragraph was inadequate, unhelpful, immature and inexperienced. The crisis inside was dull, overplayed, fantastical in a very unfantastic way. It was a continuation of the angular haircuts, the immaculately dressed, the fathers wearing babies on their chests, and the Etonian wearing shoes with holes and no socks. It was false and dull. And I wanted to burn the books.
We are in crisis (and thus, hope) now. It is a real disaster even if we can’t feel it yet. It’s already been a disaster. We’re already living the disaster now. We just don’t notice it any more. Which is why rooms of ‘art’ like the turbine can be made and paid for.
… I think…
not being there—what is the turbine?–I assume an art show/installation-but what exactly?
does the fact that it bothers both of you (Lara and mjh) so much make it meaningful in another way?
Hi, Mia – I haven’t been, either, but this is it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7667051.stm
Speaking for myself: No. But I think MJH has shown that it does, inadvertently. Which is clever (of MJH, mind, not the artist).
Hi Mia. This gives some idea–
http://tinyurl.com/5wdsxf
–but it can’t show you the essential whimsy of it, or the empty referentiality. At first I thought it was inept, now I think it’s deliberately whimsical, a way of containing the concept of disaster & making it safe.
I very much enjoyed your water painting as it developed, by the way. Thanks for showing us that.
–Mike