Curating flickr: Interpretation, scale and behaviour

Introduction

'The reason for visiting a place may have nothing to do with its architecture, however within a touristic frame, architecture is always at play. Architecture will provide context even when it is not the primary object of display'. This statement by MacCannell (2006, p.21) can be turned around when applied to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. The trouble with Tate Modern is that the Turbine Hall space is the primary object of display, much to the curators' consternation. Mori, the agency charged to carry out statistical data on visitor demographic and numbers concluded in 2009 that 37% of visitors to Tate Modern cited their primary reason to visit was to view the building.

The supremacy of the Turbine Hall is constantly reiterated through primary literature about it, measuring 155 metres by 35 metres is deemed one of the most successful elements of Tate Modern. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment's, (CABE) response to a submitted planning document for Phase 2 of Tate Modern reiterated the crucial position of the space, 'the primacy of the Turbine Hall should be enforced' (CABE 2006). 

In order to develop a methodology to assess how the public interprets and engages with the space - both emotively and physically - I will combine and analyse three categories: play, behaviour and scale. These illustrate what I believe to be common themes of images of the Turbine Hall posted on flickr (the social networking and image sharing site). For the most part, the images that I will analyse are postings of the Unilever series1. Sponsored by the Dutch food manufacturer, the Unilever Series has committed funding for a period of ten years, starting in 2000. These works, which transform the space, have varied from the contemplative - which also reveal as much about the void of the space as the actual installation piece (as in Shibboleth, Doris Salcedo, 2007) - to an enactment of spectacle, exemplified by The Weather Project (Ólafur Eliasson, 2003). Through the three selected themes, I demonstrate the relation between the intention (curatorial emphasis of the Unilever series), public space (architecture) and interpretation (behaviour) to articulate a definition of public space of the Turbine Hall as mediated by its visitors. The medium of flickr incorporates visual representations of varied individual experiences as well as collective responses evidenced through the shared platform of the internet to produce a reading of the space - the Turbine Hall - which transgresses boundaries of formal curatorial statements and programmed intentions and presents more informal and unpredictable responses of the public.

The paper aims to arrive at a definition of public space within Tate Modern's Turbine Hall through the use of flickr images as primary source material. I will refer to the conceptual framework that de Certeau (1988) discusses that uses 'inquiries and hypotheses' to investigate 'ways of operating' as not merely [descriptions of] the obscure background of social activity but to reveal the intricacies and relevance of social activity acted out against the background of the institution, here Tate Modern. I will use the flickr images as visual investigations of the overlap of social and spatial forms and processes. 

A public place?

On regularly trawling between September 2008 to February 2009 through the flickr site, there were approximately 6,459 tagged images – some of immense beauty – framing different personal experiences. Some of these were professionally constructed and had strong composition and lighting effects. Others suggest awareness of contemporary art, for example the human sculptures that recreate the Austrian artist's Erwin Wurm's (born 1954) 'one minute human sculptures'. Others still simply document a fleeting event such as the flash mob2 demonstration. 

The agenda of the Unilever Series appears to demonstrate little engagement with the theme of institutional or socio-political critique which is one of the premises that initially underlay installation art, unlike for example the installation of State Britain (2007) by the Turner Prize winning artist Mark Wallinger which was exhibited in the Duveen Gallery at Tate Britain demonstrated a powerful political critique of Britain's involvement in the Iraq war. The Unilever Series creates a euphoric and temporary suspension of the everyday, but arguably is an induced visceral experience that is very different manifestation from historical definitions of public space as sites of protest, demonstration, gathering, debate and exchange. Of course, the apparatus of sponsorship and the sponsors' desired associations enter heavily into the debate. 

The status of the Turbine Hall can be viewed as representative of a privileged order of power in the city. It is programmed by an eminent elite group of international curators, conditioned by particular funding situations, and it has a public mandate arising from its government-funded status. The gallery has a heritage which is brought about by its long association with 'high culture' whilst simultaneously Tate trustees highlight their 'aim to advance its local, national and international position' (Tate Report 2002). After carrying out interviews with local residents on the neighbouring housing estates run by the City Corporation and LBS, interview results demonstrated that although the residents admired and were proud of the building only a few said that they had actually visited the gallery. (Interviews carried out through Bankside Open Space Trust). Residents view Tate Modern's community garden project adjacent to Tate Modern's north façade as a more familiar useable space. 

By defining the Turbine Hall as a public space (defined by an institution), as opposed to those spaces within its immediate urban context (public space as mediated through the everyday), it is disengaged from the normal behaviour of the public as played out on the street or the park for example. The competition brief aimed to embed the building within its physical surrounding. Tate Modern's architects Herzog & de Meuron's competition entry presentation included a description of the ambition for it to be a place that encompasses the city's conflux of activity, 'an urban passage for all people including those not visiting the building's principal purpose', (Tate Gallery archive 12/4/6). To emulate a public street appeared to be one of the principal aims, with the implied aim of democratising the space. Herzog talks about the importance of the three elements working together to achieve the aim of a public space; the ramp, the bridge and part of the Turbine Hall coming together which will be 'characterised by public life, the museum visitors will be able to stroll about and communicate as they would do on an ordinary street' (Ryan, Moore 2000, p.38).

Why flickr?

The analysis of flickr images as a reading of the Turbine Hall provides an alternative to published images of the installations. They act as a survey of people's responses to the spaces; and demonstrate a relation between the installations, the visitors and the space. Flickr not only provides an interesting empirical base for an analysis of the Turbine Hall, but also provides an example of locating a virtual social networking site that is driven through common responses to a real-time physical environment. 

Play

The images that I have categorised into this section largely illustrate a sense of physical enjoyment of the space, or, at least, that a visceral engagement is apparent. The seventh Unilever Series installation, Test Site (2007), by Carsten Höller, is conceptually based on the theme of play in society and culture, manifested by installing a series of slides from each of the gallery floors down to the ramp. The German artist engages with the theme of play in his body of work. 

To set a theoretical framework for the concept of play, John Huzinga writing in Homo Ludens (1934), sets out the significant features of play: 'play is free, is in fact freedom, play is not ordinary or real life, play is distinct from ordinary life both as to locality and duration'. Huizinga suggests that play is central to and a necessary condition for the generation of culture. 

Test Site is explained by subjecting our bodies to an entirely other yet familiar sensorial regime. Its intention is to create a new relationship between art and sensation and a sense of liberations within a public space. 

With reference to 'Shibboleth', the eighth Unilever Series by the Columbian born artist Doris Salcedo (born 1958), the piece is intended to be a starting point for critical debate that 'actually and metaphorically opens a critical space that runs right through the heart of Tate Modern' (Bochardt-Hume 2008). Salcedo's work deals with political themes and geo-political territories and the titles of her work are significant to the reading of the installations. Salcedo's piece was dubbed the 'crack', perhaps a sign that people warmed to it and personalized it, as exemplified in the nicknaming of iconic London buildings such as the 'Gherkin', (30 St Mary's Axe); the 'NatWest Tower' (Tower 42) and the 'Shard' (32 London Bridge).

Behaviour

In his contemporary revision of Foucault's theories of heterotopias, Shane (2005) discusses how the categories of crisis, deviance, discipline (panopticon) on the one hand, and illusion on the other, act to maintain order in the overall system and thereby constraining change. However, the former (crisis) is moved outside the centre of the city while the latter is located anywhere within the fabric of the city. Foucault pointed to this geographic shift in his 'heterotopolgy', citing the cemetery that migrated from the churchyard to a suburban location and became a garden or park in the process. The Turbine Hall is a space removed from the conventional formal behavioural code of a gallery. Although Tate Modern is now viewed at the core of the city's activities, the building's typology borrows from the sites of out of town industrial spaces, such as Donald Judd's de-mobbed army shed in Marfa Texas, which Serota admires as a key exemplar of a contemporary art gallery, or those other warehouses often found set apart from urban centres such as the previous site of the Saatchi Gallery in North London. At Tate Modern, the reverse is the case: the disused industrial power station, decommissioned since 1984 has now become part of London's' central core, causing not only London's art geography to shift but to significantly re-align the urban centrality of London, a 'world city'.

With reference to the flickr images of The Long Weekend (Warhol/Cage/Satie, Tate web-site, May 2007) on first glance the Turbine Hall looks like it has been taken over by London's homeless, with sleeping bags randomly placed on the ramp. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a concert with music by John Cage, Erik Satie and Michael Nyman to accompany Andy Warhol's first film Sleep with a running time of five and a half hours. This is a temporary enactment for a fixed duration of time. Bankside is host to many historical charities such as the Blackfriars Settlement and St Mungo's, but for these, homelessness in the city is a reality. Again this references Foucault's heterotopia of illusion that transforms a place over a limited period of time and then is returned to its status quo. 

The space gained currency by appearing repeatedly on the front cover of the broadsheet newspapers. In June 2007 for example, Tony Blair was pictured delivering a speech of government policy and the arts against the backdrop of Holler's Test Site piece in the Turbine Hall. In a Guardian newspaper article entitled The Secret Diary of a Museum Attendant (2004) Adrian Hardwick (Head of Visitor Services) discussed the relation of supposedly organised groups visiting the space during Eliasson's Weather Project. Visitors performed modest protests such as writing political slogans with their bodies saying things like 'Bush Go Home'. This was mirrored on the reflective temporary ceiling that hung from the hall. The significance of a group of one hundred visitors dressed as Santa no one quite knows, but the 'flash mob' happening in 2007 demonstrated the tolerance or 'otherness' of Tate Modern organisation. A previous 'flash mob' event at Victoria Station, London in 2007 with 4,000 revellers was curtailed by four vans of policeman - due to the nuisance caused to travellers. On interviewing Hardwick (September, 2008) on the level of tolerance and the lack of visible security checks at the door, he implied that they adhere to security directives as stipulated by the DCMS, but the lack of visible security is clearly part of an image of promotion of a space that operates outside of over-surveilled areas of the public realm.

Scale

All of the Unilever Series can be classified as installation art. Installation art, which developed alongside the art movement Minimalism, is premised on the notion of active relationship between the art object and the viewer. The art embodies the presence of the viewer rather, it is temporal and dependent on its context and therefore it principally exists only for as long as it is installed within an exhibition. Scale played an important role in the defining of this movement, aside from the male prowess exemplified in the making of these large sculptures typified by the robust industrialised material such as cor-ten and rolled steel used by artists such as Anthony Caro and David Smith. 

The flickr images demonstrate a registering of and sensibility to the scale of the building. The humorous and at times whimsical images from different users, including interventions of toy army soldiers or cartoon figurines placed overlooking Shibboleth can be read as the viewer attempting to appropriate the enormous scale of the hall and to express, by means of exaggeration, how we read the space. Dwarfed by the immensity of the site, the visitor brings these Lilliputian sized figures to interact with the installation.

The discussed images illustrate how some visitors have adopted more private behaviour within a public space such as lying down on the floor, uninhibited or unaware of the codes of behaviour both formal or implied that are generally advocated within different art institutions. This suggests a shift in the reverential interpretation of an art gallery and to one of a more causal relationship with the space. Tate Modern appears reluctant to promote or enforce restrictions on the space in order to promote as wide an interpretative experience as possible. The apparent freedom of behaviour permitted within the Turbine Hall is actually underpinned by conventions of behaviour that pertain to many other museums and galleries. The hall almost requires prior knowledge, which is tested and at times subverted.

Foucault cites actors' utopian aspirations as being executed through the rules and goals of an organisation. Certainly the aspirations of Tate Modern seem to be acting outside of the conventions of a lot of museums and galleries, and the experimental nature of combining the street or urban passage with our received notions of what that typology represents is juxtaposed by the machinations of the institution. The interplay of these elements has resulted in some interesting observations of social activities. Perhaps what is apparent is that the public are underestimated in their ability to creatively use space, becoming co-creators within the Turbine Hall.

Architecturally the space operates as a vessel that is removed from a conventional typology. It is a crossbreed of typologies - simultaneously art gallery, public space and 'deconsecrated' industrial monument. The vast vacant space appears void of any immediate code of formal behaviour and it is interesting to observe through the photos how people personalise the space or conduct casual behaviour. Here the institution is creating a new discipline as to how art, commerce, place and society are merging to form new spatial types. The use of flickr images as a form of data to inform a spatial methodology provides a unique pool of visual representation, albeit limited to a particular age group, which illustrates the publics' response to this new form of public space. The institution, Tate Modern, has created a space which delicately balances tensions between a publicly accessible space and the adherence to sponsors and between the rights of the buildings' owners with the civic urban intention of providing public space and peoples' behaviour (as observed through flickr). A new type of activity can be viewed as a 'way of operating' that at times is interpretative, inventive and dynamic although often appealing to the visitor who is initiated and familiar with the global language of the contemporary art gallery. 

Corinna Dean
Tate Modern/ Cities Programme
London School of Economics