Storytelling at Tate Modern

I am sitting on the floor of the Tate Turbine Hall, and strangers keep coming up to me telling me very personal stories about their lives: the young Chinese man now a reformed liar, a Caribbean woman with recurring dreams of carrying a heavy load on her back up a steep hill and a Sri Lankan woman who is undecided at 38 years of age whether to have children or not.

These are storytellers, part of Tino Sehgal's installation. He says the work is about what it means to belong to a group.

One thing they had not expected is that members of the public would join in, not with the storytelling though I am sure there must have been some frustrated actors there who do decide to but with all the group walking, running and sitting.

At one stage I too join in. It's akin to a theatrical experience, which at times borders on the quasi-religious with dozens of people standing absolutely still chanting and singing with lights on and off.


Does it work? Absolutely. I forget about the other exhibitions I had come to see and spent most of my time in the Turbine Hall and the Tank Rooms paying only a cursory glance at some of the other galleries.

For we have reached a stage in the visual world where seeing a work, however important in the canon of art no longer does it for us in the 21st century. We want more from it than the passive viewing of something hanging on the wall.

And this can only come about by the blurring of edges between all the arts, helped by the interface with technology: the artist and the viewer become inter-changeable, like the writer and the reader.

We want to engage with it, interact with it, to become part of it even if only for a few minutes and this you could do with Sehgal's work.
This is the first time the Tate have used the Turbine Hall for live performance installation.
Hopefully we will see more in the future.