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Tracey Moberly
Tate Will Christen its Newly Converted Oil Tank Galleries With a Sprawling Multidisciplinary Summer Festival
April 23, 2012
Britain's most powerful art institution has announced the details of a 15 week-long festival this summer that will inaugurate the East and South Tanks of its future Tate 2 wing. Tate Modern's new spaces — which once contained oil fuelling the power station that houses the museum's iconic Turbine Hall — are to be dedicated to film, installation, performance, and pretty much everything in between. It is the first time that a museum has conceived exhibition spaces of this kind.
The South and the East Tanks will be unveiled on July 18 and showcase a string of solo presentations by the likes of choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, experimental filmmaker Jeff Keen, and visual artists Tania Bruguera and Haegue Yang. Works by Aldo Tambellini, the artist, filmmaker, and founder of the Gate Theatre and Black Gate, will also be shown.
"The collective spaces that [Tambellini] established in New York City in the 1960s really established a template — as did the London Film-Makers Co-op — for the way we hope the tanks will develop: as a multidisciplinary, experimental space that really champions the notion that artists can transcend boundaries," said curator of film Stuart Comer. In the East Tank, a new commission by Sung Hwan Kim will be presented for the duration of the festival.
The raw concrete "Transformer Galleries" will also be opened for the first time and host two new artworks acquired for the collection: the sound and light installation "Light Music" (1975) by linchpin of the London Film-Makers' Co-op Lis Rhodes, as well as the group performance "Crystal Quilt," first realized in 1987 by feminist artist Suzanne Lacy in collaboration with Miriam Schapiro.
"[For many years,] we had to work somehow between the gaps of the official programs," said curator of contemporary art and performance Catherine Wood. "So it's very exciting to have a location where we can plant the seeds of experiment and watch them grow over time."
Education and learning will be key components of the program. From August 16 to 27, part of the festival will be dedicated to — and designed by — young people. "Undercurrent" will be articulated, curator of young people's programs Mark Miller explained, around "the construction of sub-cultures," "what culture is, how it's transferred, and how it's moved from one place to the other." Tracey Moberly will design an evolving "social, participatory space" using networking sites; London-based research group Dubmorphology will create a new sound and video installation responding to Tate's environment; and Rinse 106.8FM will add some countercultural groove to the mix.
The rehabilitation of the Oil Tanks marks the end of Tate 2's first phase. Designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, a new building rising out of the tanks is currently under construction. It is scheduled for completion by December 2016, "but my guess is that it will be sooner than that," said Nicholas Serota. £160 million ($257 million), 75 percent of the funding required, has been raised so far. It remains to be seen whether Tate's current large number of gifts will dwindle if the Treasury's controversial plans to cap tax relief on donations are approved.
Although the Oil Tanks are marketed as the first permanent galleries for film, performance, and live art, they will close on October 28, and it might be a while until they fully serve their function. "We will continue on through 2013 and 2014 according to our ability to get into these tanks," said Serota. "We don't know yet precisely when the builders are going to let us in, but periodically the tanks will undoubtedly be in use. It's a festival that lasts 15 weeks, we'll see what happens thereafter."
The Tanks at Tate Modern, July 18 - October 28, 2012.
