Tacita Dean: film, 2011 | designboom

This level of craftsmanship in film is rare these days! I’d love to see this in person. I’m fascinated with the idea of film as spectacle, and a 13 meter high projection in the Tate Modern’s turbine hall is nothing if not that!

the tate modern presents the installation ‘film’ by england-born and berlin-based filmmaker tacita dean. part of the unilever series an annual artistic commission which invites an artist to fill the museum’s turbine hall— ‘film’ is the twelfth installation of its kind and the first film project in the history of the unilever series. the piece is an 11-minute, silent, 35 millimeter film projected at a height of 13 meters in a darkened end of the exhibition space. dean shoots and manipulates exclusively by means of analogue film, rather than employing a digital medium at any point throughout her process. in this way, she is the architect, organizing her work by hand as she overlays sketches and paint; cuts and photographs the raw material; and ultimately alters the sound and vision of her art in a process that is highly sculptural. dean’s tinting and cut-film techniques help to create her surrealistic installation; each frame of film altered entirely by hand.
the piece features black, white and colorful images of both man-made and natural surroundings, flickering brightly in the darkened turbine hall. ‘film’ is celebration and exposure of dean’s artistic ideals in addition to the malleable quality of the medium itself.