We don’t often have photographs on Crooked Timber, but I though it worth making an exception in this case. I spent the afternoon at London’s “Tate Modern”:http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/default.htm where an installation by Olafur Eliasson entitles “The Weather Project”:http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/eliasson/ currently dominates the Turbine Hall through which one enters the gallery. The “sun” bathes everyone in yellow light, figures are reflected in mirrors on the ceiling and steam jets create an atmosphere of shimmering mystery appropriate for an operatic stage set. It is as if we are in the dying days of an aged planet. Go and see it if you can.
{ 3 comments }
Icy Hot Stunta 01.02.04 at 5:20 am
“It is as if we are in the dying days of an aged planet.”
sounds familiar…
Michael Otsuka 01.02.04 at 10:05 am
I wasn’t impressed by the Tate sun. From the ground level, where I first caught a glimpse, it appeared washed out and artificial.
I found it sort of creepy all those people lying on the concrete floor beneath the sun for long periods of time and staring at their images in the mirrors on the ceiling. I started imagining that this was some post-nuclear-holocaust underground cavern, the world above-ground rendered uninhabitable. The people miss the sun (and, in fact, have kind of forgotten what it looks like), so they construct this pale copy to worship. Then I started thinking of Plato’s cave — pale image on a wall of the real thing, but people loving it because they don’t know any better.
Then I realized that you guys in Britian haven’t got a real sun to speak of. So I should be more understanding of your strange worship of the electric sun in the Tate.
ankit 01.24.04 at 3:48 pm
about timber
Comments on this entry are closed.