In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance
Artistic experimentation, as well as the concepts elaborated to define it, have undergone considerable changes since the age of the avant-gardes and yet experimentation still retains some of its critical purchase. The present article focuses on recent experimentations in the field of installation an...
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| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lenguaje: | Anglais |
| Publicado: |
Angles
2020
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| Acceso en línea: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1024 |
|---|---|
| record_format |
openedition |
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OpenEdition Journal |
| language |
Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
| building |
0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
performance art expérimental art contemporain Tate Modern Unilever Series Salcedo Doris Sehgal Tino experimental art contemporary art installation art performance art Tate Modern Unilever Series Salcedo Doris Sehgal Tino |
| spellingShingle |
performance art expérimental art contemporain Tate Modern Unilever Series Salcedo Doris Sehgal Tino experimental art contemporary art installation art performance art Tate Modern Unilever Series Salcedo Doris Sehgal Tino Bernard, Catherine In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance |
| description |
Artistic experimentation, as well as the concepts elaborated to define it, have undergone considerable changes since the age of the avant-gardes and yet experimentation still retains some of its critical purchase. The present article focuses on recent experimentations in the field of installation and performance art and on the way these works may enlighten us on the kind of critical leverage offered by aesthetic experimentation in its complex and often conflicted relation to our contemporary sensorium. Taking the case of some of the most prominent installations and performances commissioned by Tate Modern as part of the Unilever Series (2000–2012), we intend to understand how the criticality of experimentation as imagined by the great avant-gardes has been queered and reinvented by artists who work within the regime of the spectacular while remaining faithful to the incisive spirit of experimentation. Our first intention is to explore the empiricist legacy of experimentation, by returning to the semantic pairing of scientific and artistic experimentation, as evidenced, for example, in Joseph Wright of Derby’s great oil: An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768). Placing the likes of Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth (2008) and Tino Sehgal’s These Associations (2012) in a long historical and critical perspective, we intend to highlight a still relatively under-explored aspect of experimentation: that of corporeality and sensation in their relation to critical knowledge. Taking experimentation to rely on a subtle tension between sensation and intellection or between experience and concept, we try to show how contemporary experimentation reinvents such a tension. Placed at the very heart of the museum machine and of its economy of attraction, the works in the Unilever Series foregrounded the economy of sensation often harnessing the sensational to a complex critical stance. Working both with and against the sensation regime imposed by the culture industry, these works elaborated complex experiential allegories in which the visitor’s experience worked towards differential modes of being. More specifically even, it was, we argue, their collective logic that gave us to grasp our current regime of visibility and experience, at the juncture of the private and the public, of sensation and corporate culture. |
| author |
Bernard, Catherine |
| author_facet |
Bernard, Catherine |
| author_sort |
Bernard, Catherine |
| title |
In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance |
| title_short |
In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance |
| title_full |
In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance |
| title_fullStr |
In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance |
| title_full_unstemmed |
In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance |
| title_sort |
in the turbine of experimentation: tate modern and the new (?) rationale of collective performance |
| publisher |
Angles |
| publishDate |
2020 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1024 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1024 |
| _version_ |
1877293946657308672 |
| spelling |
openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1024 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1024 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.1024 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1024 2020-07-16T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9mzb https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ In the Turbine of Experimentation: Tate Modern and the New (?) Rationale of Collective Performance Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Bernard, Catherine performance art expérimental art contemporain Tate Modern Unilever Series Salcedo Doris Sehgal Tino experimental art contemporary art installation art performance art Tate Modern Unilever Series Salcedo Doris Sehgal Tino Artistic experimentation, as well as the concepts elaborated to define it, have undergone considerable changes since the age of the avant-gardes and yet experimentation still retains some of its critical purchase. The present article focuses on recent experimentations in the field of installation and performance art and on the way these works may enlighten us on the kind of critical leverage offered by aesthetic experimentation in its complex and often conflicted relation to our contemporary sensorium. Taking the case of some of the most prominent installations and performances commissioned by Tate Modern as part of the Unilever Series (2000–2012), we intend to understand how the criticality of experimentation as imagined by the great avant-gardes has been queered and reinvented by artists who work within the regime of the spectacular while remaining faithful to the incisive spirit of experimentation. Our first intention is to explore the empiricist legacy of experimentation, by returning to the semantic pairing of scientific and artistic experimentation, as evidenced, for example, in Joseph Wright of Derby’s great oil: An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768). Placing the likes of Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth (2008) and Tino Sehgal’s These Associations (2012) in a long historical and critical perspective, we intend to highlight a still relatively under-explored aspect of experimentation: that of corporeality and sensation in their relation to critical knowledge. Taking experimentation to rely on a subtle tension between sensation and intellection or between experience and concept, we try to show how contemporary experimentation reinvents such a tension. Placed at the very heart of the museum machine and of its economy of attraction, the works in the Unilever Series foregrounded the economy of sensation often harnessing the sensational to a complex critical stance. Working both with and against the sensation regime imposed by the culture industry, these works elaborated complex experiential allegories in which the visitor’s experience worked towards differential modes of being. More specifically even, it was, we argue, their collective logic that gave us to grasp our current regime of visibility and experience, at the juncture of the private and the public, of sensation and corporate culture. L’expérimentation dans l’art, tout comme les concepts élaborés pour la définir, ont connu de très profonds changements depuis l’ère des grandes avant-gardes et pourtant l’expérimentation conserve une incontestable puissance de décentrement critique. Cet article se tourne vers des expérimentations récentes dans le champ de l’installation et de la performance, et s’intéresse à la manière dont elles nous éclairent sur la relation complexe et souvent conflictuelle que l’art entretient avec notre sensorium. Prenant pour exemples certaines des créations qui virent le jour dans le cadre de l’Unilever Series, commissionnée par Tate Modern entre 2000 et 2012, nous souhaitons comprendre comment la visée critique de l’expérimentation telle que définie par les avant-gardes a été repensée par des artistes qui travaillent de l’intérieur du régime spectaculaire de l’art, tout en restant fidèles à la volonté incisive de l’expérimentation. Notre intention est tout d’abord d’explorer l’héritage empiriste de l’expérimentation, en revenant sur l’association qui lie sémantiquement les régimes scientifique et artistique de l’expérimentation, telle qu’elle est donnée à voir, par exemple, dans l’huile de Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768). Lisant des œuvres telles que Shibboleth de Doris Salcedo (2008) ou These Associations de Tino Sehgal (2012) dans une perspective historique et théorique longue, nous visons à comprendre un aspect encore peu exploré de l’expérimentation : le lien entre la sensation ou la corporéité et l’élaboration d’un savoir critique. L’expérimentation est ici perçue comme fondée sur une tension subtile entre sensation et intellection, ou encore entre expérience et conceptualisation, et nous souhaitons montrer comment l’expérimentation contemporaine tente de réinventer cette tension. Placées au centre de la machine muséale et de son économie de l’attraction, les œuvres de l’Unilever Series donnaient à voir l’économie de la sensation et mettaient le sensationnel au service d’une vision critique complexe. Travaillant à la fois avec et contre le régime de sensation imaginée par l’industrie culturelle, ces œuvres élaborèrent de complexes allégories dans lesquelles l’expérience du visiteur induisait des régimes d’expérience différentiels. C’est plus spécifiquement encore leur logique collective qui nous permettait de comprendre les régimes de visibilité et d’expérience actuels, tels qu’ils travaillent à la jonction du privé et du public, de la sensation et de la culture capitaliste. |