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Something great is happening at the Tate
Jan. 7th, 2007 11:39 amI thought the Late at the Tate event I played on Friday night was rather extraordinary, so today I just wanted to scribble down some thoughts about it, thoughts which point in all sorts of directions. I didn't want my final comment on the event to be a jibe about the restriction on the use of pornographic or violent images, and the irony of the juxtaposition of that injunction with a room hung with scenes of 19th century British imperial slaughter, poignant though that was.
First of all, the Tate was positively milling with people, lots of culturally-active 60somethings keen to see the blockbuster Holbein show before it closes, but the Electricity Bill event also brought lots of young people in. You could wander about, from hall to room to cafe to exhibition, and enjoy the great public spaces late into the evening.
It reminded me of Malcolm McLaren's radical manifesto, when he stood (backed by Alan McGee) for the London mayorship. Influenced by Guy Debord, he proposed putting bars in public libraries and keeping museums open all night, so they'd become public thoroughfares.
Now, some people (Rem Koolhaas, for instance) have laid a great emphasis on shopping areas being the newest and most vibrant form of public space. But what I noticed this time in London was that shopping was on the defensive and on the decline, as exemplary public space. I was surprised to find that a video store on the Kingsland Road and a clothes shop on Hoxton Street no longer let you just walk right in off the street. Like French banks, they'd rigged up complicated buzzer systems. You had to be profiled before you'd be let in. When I asked why, they said "We've had some problems... robberies". Other shops kept their open doors, but displayed very conspicuous CCTV warning notices. The kind of mutual trust necessary for pleasant public spaces was clearly on the slide, banished (in Hoxton at least) by polarized Gini and crime triggered by "relative deprivation".
So, at a time when shops are being forced to taint and tint their transparency -- the big openness of their glass windows and doors -- and turn selective, opaque and private, it's very important that spaces like museums should trust people, open up, and host a variety of unexpected events. And isn't it interesting that "fusty" institutions should be the ones pioneering public life, and not the private sector?
If I contrast the Spitz show I played on Thursday night with the Tate show the next night, I have to say that, great though the Spitz was, it was a fairly classic rock venue -- dark, rather shabby, a kind of heavy, steamy sweat pit, a beer pit, a bear pit. It could have been any rock venue over the last twenty or thirty years. The Tate, however, was an institution changing rather rapidly, flexing muscles it didn't know it had, welcoming flux and changing its role. In other words, things are moving more interestingly and quickly in the world of museums now than in the world of rock and roll.
One thing I was determined to do, when I took to the stage at Tate Britain, was to acknowledge and use the magnificent room around me in my performance. While I don't want to criticize fellow performers like the Skull Defekts, I did rather despair that their performance consisted of two men standing behind a trestle table playing abstract noise from laptops, while a video projection flicked a sequence of arty, menacing images. As the music developed beats, the men stared at their computer screens rather more intently, and one of them started nodding his shaved head in time to the rhythm.
Perhaps there was something poignant about the Defekts' studied indifference to Room 9 of the Tate. It looked like one culture grafted onto another. Something modern happening somewhere ancient, like a laser light show at the pyramids. But I was determined to do something different, perhaps because I'm a very different kind of performer, and because I spent three months last year as a performance artist in a museum, precisely using the galleries as a context, and improvising continuously about what I found there.
So as I sang songs like "The Artist Overwhelmed" (its lyrics inspired by Romantic painter Fuseli's canvas "The Artist Overwhelmed by the Grandeur of Ancient Ruins") I was delighted to be able to mime being overwhelmed by the "ruins" of the paintings hanging all around, and as I danced a jig in "Robert Dye", I was pleased to be able to jerk a thumb in the direction of the next room when I mentioned "His Majesty Prince Albert", as if the Prince Consort were just then strolling through the gallery.
First of all, the Tate was positively milling with people, lots of culturally-active 60somethings keen to see the blockbuster Holbein show before it closes, but the Electricity Bill event also brought lots of young people in. You could wander about, from hall to room to cafe to exhibition, and enjoy the great public spaces late into the evening.
It reminded me of Malcolm McLaren's radical manifesto, when he stood (backed by Alan McGee) for the London mayorship. Influenced by Guy Debord, he proposed putting bars in public libraries and keeping museums open all night, so they'd become public thoroughfares.
Now, some people (Rem Koolhaas, for instance) have laid a great emphasis on shopping areas being the newest and most vibrant form of public space. But what I noticed this time in London was that shopping was on the defensive and on the decline, as exemplary public space. I was surprised to find that a video store on the Kingsland Road and a clothes shop on Hoxton Street no longer let you just walk right in off the street. Like French banks, they'd rigged up complicated buzzer systems. You had to be profiled before you'd be let in. When I asked why, they said "We've had some problems... robberies". Other shops kept their open doors, but displayed very conspicuous CCTV warning notices. The kind of mutual trust necessary for pleasant public spaces was clearly on the slide, banished (in Hoxton at least) by polarized Gini and crime triggered by "relative deprivation".
So, at a time when shops are being forced to taint and tint their transparency -- the big openness of their glass windows and doors -- and turn selective, opaque and private, it's very important that spaces like museums should trust people, open up, and host a variety of unexpected events. And isn't it interesting that "fusty" institutions should be the ones pioneering public life, and not the private sector?
If I contrast the Spitz show I played on Thursday night with the Tate show the next night, I have to say that, great though the Spitz was, it was a fairly classic rock venue -- dark, rather shabby, a kind of heavy, steamy sweat pit, a beer pit, a bear pit. It could have been any rock venue over the last twenty or thirty years. The Tate, however, was an institution changing rather rapidly, flexing muscles it didn't know it had, welcoming flux and changing its role. In other words, things are moving more interestingly and quickly in the world of museums now than in the world of rock and roll.
One thing I was determined to do, when I took to the stage at Tate Britain, was to acknowledge and use the magnificent room around me in my performance. While I don't want to criticize fellow performers like the Skull Defekts, I did rather despair that their performance consisted of two men standing behind a trestle table playing abstract noise from laptops, while a video projection flicked a sequence of arty, menacing images. As the music developed beats, the men stared at their computer screens rather more intently, and one of them started nodding his shaved head in time to the rhythm.
Perhaps there was something poignant about the Defekts' studied indifference to Room 9 of the Tate. It looked like one culture grafted onto another. Something modern happening somewhere ancient, like a laser light show at the pyramids. But I was determined to do something different, perhaps because I'm a very different kind of performer, and because I spent three months last year as a performance artist in a museum, precisely using the galleries as a context, and improvising continuously about what I found there.
So as I sang songs like "The Artist Overwhelmed" (its lyrics inspired by Romantic painter Fuseli's canvas "The Artist Overwhelmed by the Grandeur of Ancient Ruins") I was delighted to be able to mime being overwhelmed by the "ruins" of the paintings hanging all around, and as I danced a jig in "Robert Dye", I was pleased to be able to jerk a thumb in the direction of the next room when I mentioned "His Majesty Prince Albert", as if the Prince Consort were just then strolling through the gallery.