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Claire Tancons #bmwtatelive #bmwtatelive Claire Tancons Up Hill Down Hall? claire Carnival Performance in the Turbine Hall: between tAnCons Institutional Critique and Instituting the Public ‘Mas in the museum?’1 This query The question began reframing the succintly framed the ambivalences debate, if unintentionally, by using of the experiment that resulted in the Caribbean colloquium mas’, Up Hill Down Hall: An indoor carnival short for masquerade, rather than on 23 August 2014 in response to the European appellation carnival, Catherine Wood’s invitation to the name of one of the seasons during present Carnival at Tate Modern, which masquerades take place in in the Turbine Hall, as part of the the Caribbean – as a more adequate BMW Tate Live 2014 series. description of the new cultural phenomenon that evolved in the Americas. 2 In doing so, it began pulling at a first layer of historical ambivalence by pointing to the colonial dominance of an allegedly emancipatory practice. The implied skepticism of the question’s (detail) 2014. formulation also unravelled a second layer of institutional ambivalence: bringing such a historically anti- institutional cultural practice as carnival within the context of a premier cultural institution like the museum. Finally, the possible curated by Claire Tancons. Photo © Akiko Ota No Black in the Union Jack punning of mas’ and the masses revealed a third layer of ideological ambivalence: leading the masses, historically construed as unruly Up Hill Down Hall and mob-like, to become pacified as ‘the general public’ within the museum’s normalising framework. Fig.2.3.1 Marlon Gri$ith, As part of 132 133 #bmwtatelive Claire Tancons #bmwtatelive Claire Tancons The colloquium mas’, most frequently Trinidadian carnival traditions These tensions likewise played Mas' in used in Caribbean English and and mas’ artistic practices played out in the organisation of U p Hill attributed to the artistic component a significant part in the formative Down Hall and within Tate Modern’s of the Trinidad Carnival, influenced events that culminated in the Notting institutional politics against the Museum both my curatorial process and the Hill Carnival – with the indoor town the broader context of London’s artistic practices of Marlon Gri$ith hall balls of Claudia Jones of the carnival history and the politics and Hew Locke, two of the artists in mid 1950s; the steel pan processions of institutionalisation. Up Hill Down Hall . The practice of of Russ Henderson in Rhaune Laslett’s mas’, which includes costumed bands Notting Hill Fayre of the mid 1960s The location of Tate Modern across competing to live and recorded musical and the first costumed bands designed the river from the City brought to my accompaniment, has become the template by masmen Peter Minshall and Lawrence mind the long history of carnival in from which most diasporic Caribbean Noel in the early 1970s. 4 This process London to which two recent upheavals carnivals have evolved in the US and attests to the successful cultural bear witness: Reclaim the Streets the UK. Brooklyn’s Labor Day Parade and dissemination and metropolitan waged its Carnival against Capital London’s Notting Hill Carnival are the appropriation of both an artistic in 1999 and Occupy London staged its most notable examples. process and a festival model and, own carnivalesque protests in 2011–12 as such, a measure of institutionali- in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. Contrasting each of the three terms, As a performance art form, mas’ was sation of what has now become a full- Like most other historic European mas’, Carnival and the masses on the as unlikely to enter the purview of fledged multicultural event, Europe’s carnivals, London’s dates back to one hand with another set of terms, art historians and the realm of museum largest street festival. the medieval era; the Notting Hill Museum, Turbine Hall and Tate Modern galleries as western performance Carnival presents its latter-day on the other, I will attempt to art itself until the second half In Trinidad, whether following colonial legacy. provide retrospectively, alongside of the twentieth century. As mass emancipation in the nineteenth the collaborating artists, students performance staged in the streets century or leading up to Independence and participants, a critical analysis stemming from African diasporic in the twentieth century, Carnival of what emerged, or was instituted, aesthetics, mas’ was even less likely became as much an oppositional with Up Hill Down Hall. to cross the threshold of the museum instrument for the a$irmation of space. The Brooklyn Museum continues freedom by the formerly enslaved as to remain mostly insulated from and an integrative tool in the formation oblivious to the West Indian American of a modern multi-ethnic nation. Day Parade, the o$icial day of the The tensions between the resistant Caribbean Labor Day Carnival Parade and accommodationist tendencies even as it rolls past its doorsteps of the complex socio-cultural The Masses on Eastern Parkway.3 phenomenon that is Carnival keep playing out, though the former continue to be the privileged anti- at Tate colonial narrative while the later is dismissed as counter-emancipatory.5 Modern 134 135 #bmwtatelive Claire Tancons #bmwtatelive Claire Tancons Although too large in scope to be Starting across the Millennium Once within the Turbine Hall, encompassed by the BMW Tate Live Bridge on the other side of the Carnival it appeared as though all the colours programme, both the carnivalesque Thames from Tate Modern, Marlon of the visible spectrum had been protests of anti-capitalist Gri$ith’s No Black in the Union Jack assembled and were being disrupted activists and the anti-racist established the connection between in the by a sea of black, making black demonstrations out of which Claudia London’s carnivalesque protests undoubtably one of the colours lining Jones’s 1959 Caribbean Carnival grew and its current Caribbean-inspired up the fabric of the British flag. informed the making of Up Hill Down multicultural carnival no less Turbine Hall Choreographed as a charging army Hall. In keeping with BMW Tate Live’s powerfully for being essentially of masqueraders bearing costumes stated interest in concentrating on visual. Documentary photographs designed as angular black and metal- the Notting Hill Carnival, I chose provide the striking sight of his coloured shields in reflective to focus on its historical origins army of masqueraders marching down material reminiscent of anti-riot in order to draw out the underlying the bridge, their wings framing police gear, No Black in the Union social and political function of the dome of the cathedral in the Jack was a reminder of the perils Carnival and expose Tate Modern and background (figs 2.3.2). Though the of being black in the streets and its audience to the deeper currents performance began at the foot of of the power yielded through fighting that convey its substance beneath St Paul’s as the artist requested, back. Blending visual and tactical the seductive sea of masks. it was not advertised in the o$icial references from the traditionally announcement of the project. opposing forces of the police and Reading o$icial Up Hill Down Hall black youth in the streets, be it announcements, you would only expect during riots or at the Notting Hill the performance to be within the Carnival from which riots have also Turbine Hall. Were the street masses historically sparked, Gri$ith put the Fig.2.3.3 Gia Wol$, Canopy, 2014. potentially uneducated in museum As part of Up Hill Down Hall public into an equivocal position. manners, too untamed to risk being curated by Claire Tancons. allowed to enter Tate Modern? Or was Photo © Oliver Cowling for Tate Photography If the public, coerced back against this institutional distanciation the wall and away from the entrance from ‘behind-the-bridge’ popular with the relay of red ropes handheld audiences a re-territorialisation by volunteers at the ground level in a symbolic of cultural power instead?6 mirroring of Gia Wol$’s Canopy above, Was the spectre of Liberate Tate had been corralled into taking sides activism too menacing to risk spatially speaking, there was no easy inadvertently advertising a carnival side to be on. The powers blended performance as an invitation to together as one in Gri$ith’s darkly a carnivalesque protest? futuristic masquerade. (figs.2.3.3 & 2.3.4) . The handling of red ropes – taught by Wol$ to volunteers – provided insights into one of the ways some Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs in New Orleans (the city where I have Fig.2.3.4 Marlon Gri$ith, No Black in the Union Jack under lived since 2007) channel the crowd Fig.2.3.2 Marlon Gri$ith, Gia Wol$’s, Canopy, 2014. away and funnel performers within the No Black in the Union Jack (detail) As part of Up Hill Down Hall 2014. As part of Up Hill Down Hall curated space cleared for the street parades, curated by Claire Tancons. by Claire Tancons. Photo © Akiko Ota known locally as 'second lines.' Photo © Oliver Cowling for Tate Photography 136 137 #bmwtatelive Claire Tancons #bmwtatelive Claire Tancons In the Turbine Hall, Canopy Another carnival space of reference The Level 4 bridge, as of yet further outlined the architectural was that of the Notting Hill inaccessible to the public, enjoyed monumentality of the largest indoor Carnival itself. The Notting Hill a soft opening: throws of helicopter- public space in a museum. It also neighbourhood provided a shaped paper ticker-tape descended provided a spatial frame of its own topographical blueprint against towards the crowd dispersing the within which the mass performance which to reimagine Carnival in and cloud of The Sky is Dancing , a project could be amplified.
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