Taexalia

wild.life

How It Is

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I love the way I feel when I walk into the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. Sometimes I wonder if I even need an installation at the other end, or if I could just be satisfied with the imposing hulk of space. What would I do with the space? How would I move in it? Would I start to build something?

Today there is a big black box looming at the end of the hall. Half-term children are running and screaming underneath the huge steel structure, trusting the construction won't start to creak and bend and collapse. A sign depicts that photography is banned as cameras flash and catch me right in the retina.

We turn and look up the ramp at the black space peppered with the faint shapes of light coloured garments. It reminds me of a puppet show I saw as a child where the performers dressed in black so that only the dragons and crows could be seen against the blackout curtain at the back of the stage.

We walk together up the ramp and into the blackness. I am tickled by the way the box seems to eat the light. I observe my reactions as my senses try to figure out the right course of action... In a city where shoving a tourist is almost polite, where queue jumping is an act of survival and worthy of a category in the next Olympics and where personal space is at a premium - it is interesting to walk into the black box trusting that no-one will barge into you and there is an almost communal feeling as everyone becomes nothing in nothingness.

Then confusion as I guess we are at the wall but I cannot believe that just because everyone else has stopped that I must stop. I need to stretch my arm and feel the solid wall before I can turn and look at the light. I find myself wishing it was bigger, longer, blacker.

Miroslaw Balka - How It Is - Tate Modern