The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson (8267) October 2003
Tate Modern, London

Memory at the Tate Modern [1 | 2]
We live in an image-age, an age of photographic images. We begin with the image and search for its meaning through reading, talking, and writing. My memory jumps me to college in the late 70s, I had made a documentary film about housing co-ops, using just still images. One of the technicians said I should look at a film called La Jetée. It was many years later that I saw this film by Chris Marker, and by then I had left college and didn’t have access to the resources for making 16 mm films, or the people who encouraged and inspired me.
This quiescent space, these museum walls, create an anchoring space for contemplation. The value of these objects is defined through this traditional cultural space and the aura accrued to the institution of art. The group sits in a semicircle around their objects. We discuss the meanings we bring with them - private stories, associated meanings, unresolved histories.
Chris Marker wondered, ‘how people remember things who don’t film, don’t photograph, don’t record onto tape’. The Tate should have a room devoted to new cinema. A big, open, darkened space to sit and watch the future films on wireless flat screens with wireless headphones. Not to sit in rows of seats, but at round tables in small groups, social groups, learning groups, curious groups. A place to wander with strangers and discover memories.

Tony Hall