I went to the Tate modern yesterday to look at These Associations series by Tino sehgal. It was on at the turbine hall. Tino Sehgal is a British-German artist of part Indian ancestry based in Berlin. His work involves one or more people carrying out instructions set by the artist, which the artist calls "constructed Situations”. Some of his notable installations over the last decade include, Instead of Allowing Something to Rise Up to Your Face Dancing Bruce and Dan and Other Things (2000), which had someone crawling along the floor in Frankfurt, This is So Contemporary (2005) which had museum guards singing and dancing in a sudden outburst of joy as if they were possessed.
His installation, “These Associations” from above, looked like shoals of fish swimming from one end to other and when they stopped, they looked like they froze in time. Sometimes they went in circles and sometimes they sped up as if running from an invisible monster chasing them. I wasn't sure what they were doing, so I went down to the hall and took some photographs. When the crowd was running towards the other end of the hall, a young woman, maybe in her mid-20s approached me and started to tell me a story of a couple in Greenwich whom she knew. She told me that the husband asks her to visit their cafe whenever he sees her even in front of his wife, but she never goes there or intends to go there in the future, not that she doesn't like the couple but she finds the intense gaze of the husband very intimidating. Then, I asked her if she was the part of the crowd as I was still confused why she came up to me and without introduction, started telling me her story. She replied yes and told me it was an installation by Tino Sehgal and ran away to join her crowd.
I was still standing there when another young woman approached me, and again like the woman before, started telling me her story of loving a girlfriend, but not in a sexual way. I found her story very fascinating because I could relate to her feelings. Then like the other woman, she ran away to join her crowd. At first I was scared; I have to say because we don't often see people coming up to us on the streets to tell us a story, a slice of their experience.
Laura Cummings for The Guardian wrote: “But how could one not be interested? It is almost a test of human solidarity. To call the experience Sehgal has set in motion life-affirming would be no more than platitude. This is a profound work and at the same time riveting; a new form of art somewhere between theatre, performance art, dance and memoir and yet based on an immense gathering of humanity that includes all of us as live participants. Life art, I suppose” I agree with her for the fact it as very interesting. Also, his “theatrical” work could be a direct influence from Dance and as a dancer.
It was an "enlightening" experience as I felt an instant connection to both people I spoke to. I could hear people speaking, whether I was to engage in a conversation, was my choice and I chose to speak to them and it made the connection more intense. It felt like walking down a street seeing a stranger and when we look at them they seem ordinary people just going about minding their own business, but if you were to know that person you would know who they really are and how similar you may be. I think it's an installation about how people judge each other, just by how they seem, in this case strangers. This installation is on till 28th October.
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