In loving memory of 3mm

27Dec11

The most recent instalment of the Unilever turbine hall exhibition at the Tate Modern is a video piece by Tacita Dean. Simply titled FILM it consists of a large screen hung in portrait at one end of the turbine hall (the posterior end). On it are projected a series of emotive images, some overlayed onto shots of the opposite end of the hall, with it’s high windows. Soft swirls of smoke or an image of a crashing wave are beamed, arranged in a parallel fashion, with the windows a reoccurring motif. There is no sound. The mood is sombre, thoughtful. The windows are like those of a church altar’s back-drop of glass, allowing worshippers to be filled with the awesomeness of light from within the dark recesses of the holy space. The turbine hall has been similarly cast in darkness – the actual windows papered over – the film taking the responsibility of this impressive source of light and doing the work of feeding inspirational images to you (and thereby manipulating what you experience, rather than allowing your own imagination to wander in the clarity and simplicity of pure light). But this is because this installation is not providing a new holy space within the Tate modern, but instead is a shrine or a dedication to one of the artist’s best loved mediums: that of 3mm film, which has just been discontinued in factory production, swallowed up by the insatiable digital age.

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