La inmensa Sala de las Turbinas de la Tate Modern proyecta hasta marzo «FILM», un poema filmado de la artista británica Tacita Dean que es al mismo tiempo un vibrante alegato a favor del cine analógico en vías de desaparición desde el comienzo de la era digital. El espectador, sumido en la penumbra como en un cine, contempla una pantalla vertical en forma de película, con perforaciones en los lados incluidas, por la que desfilan durante 11 minutos todo tipo de imágenes.
Tacita Dean: FILM at the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, review
Richard Dorment reviews Tacita Dean’s ‘FILM’, the Tate Modern’s 12th Unilever commission.
Artists confronted with the challenge of the Unilever Commission have two choices. Either they can use the whole of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall as Olafur Eliasson, Anish Kapoor and Doris Salcedo did in their unforgettable installations, or they can occupy only the area behind the staircase at the end of the long ramp at the entrance. The second option has the advantage that the walk from the empty entrance down the ramp builds up the viewer’s expectation of finding something extraordinary in the darkness behind the staircase. In that case, though, the art work had better BE extraordinary – and very few of the artists who opted for that solution created anything very special. An exception was the impact created by Ai Wei Wei when he scattered ten million porcelain sunflower seeds over the floor last year.
Tacita Dean goes for option two. Her contribution to the series is a 35mm silent film of the east wall of the back gallery projected onto a screen placed directly in front of the east wall of the back gallery. By flipping the traditional horizontal format of the cinema screen into a vertical position she rhymes its size and shape with the insistent vertical girders along the north and south walls.
As the film begins we realise we are looking at a strip of celluloid, complete with sprockets on either side to attach it to the projector. Using the screen as her ‘canvas’, Dean creates a swiftly moving collage of cinematic techniques and possibilities – cuts, fades, superimpositions, and bursts of colour alternating with black and white still photographs and archival footage . Dean keeps emphasising the verticality of the screen by showing balloons and bubbles floating downward, an escalator moving upwards, and streams and fountains running from the top of the screen to the bottom.
As you watch transfixed, details lifted from paintings by Magritte and Mondrian appear and disappear, while Eliasson’s mirrored sun flashes by, as does the famous mountain that is the logo of Paramount pictures. The film only lasts about 11 minutes, and I had to sit through it more than once before I began to grasp any of this.
But I’ll be back. ‘Film’ isn’t one of the greats in the series – but it’s a successful attempt to grapple with that impossible space by grabbing the viewer’s attention and holding it long enough to make us want to return to see it all over again
publicado por The Telegraph