TATE AND EGG LIVE

January – September 2003

Sponsored by Egg
Media partner: The Guardian

This was a series of live events bringing together performers and artists from the visual arts, music, theatre, film and dance at Tate Britain and Tate Modern.

January 2003

Cai Guo-Qiang: YE GONG HAO LONG (Tate Modern - Outside)

Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang was commissioned to make a spectacular, one minute firework explosion project for Tate Modern, the River Thames and the Millennium Bridge. Titled ' Ye Gong Hao Long' (Mr Ye who loves dragons), the one minute 'explosion' took place at 7pm on 31 January, the eve of Chinese New Year.

February 2003

Mark Leckey: BIG BOX STATUE ACTION (Tate Britain)

A 30 minute live event by Mark Leckey featured one of the artist's trademark Sound Systems "in conversation" with Jacob Epstein's alabaster sculpture, 'Jacob and the Angel'. Using sampled music and archive material, Leckey activated a newly created sound piece which alternately serenaded and assaulted Epstein's work. The piece was designed specifically to suit to the unique acoustic qualities of Tate Britain's Duveen galleries, especially the glass-domed roof of the Octagon under which the stand-off was staged.

Anish Kapoor, Arvo Part, Peter Sellers: LAMENT TATE (Tate Modern)

Anish Kapoor's soaring sculptural installation Marsyas was the third commission in The Unilever Series at Tate Modern. At 140 metres long and 40 metres high, it filled the cavernous space of the Turbine Hall with its deep red trumpet-like form. Inspired by the work, Arvo Pärt wrote a new orchestral piece drawing on Kapoor's theme of the flaying of Marsyas, and on Pärt's own experience of the sculpture. Designed to take place in the Turbine Hall, the new work, 'Lament Tate' featured pianist Hélène Grimaud and Alexander Briger, conducting musicians from London Sinfonietta and the Royal Academy of Music, with the distinguished American theatre and opera director Peter Sellars advising on the realisation of the performance. This was preceded and complemented by Sellars' setting of Antonin Artaud's 'For An End to the Judgement of God' and June Jordan's 'Kissing God Goodbye', staged as a Pentagon Press Conference on the current war.

March 2003:

Kyupi Kyupi: CABAROTICA (Tate Modern)

Japanese performance unit Kyupi Kyupi presented their unique, cabaret-style 'dinner show' for Tate & Egg Live: free at Tate Modern in March. The group's activities combine references to urban popular culture, Manga, pornography and cute cartoon characters with the more traditional performance practices of cabaret and theatre. Kyupi Kyupi is attracting international attention for its extraordinary live act that samples entertainment culture and taps into the hybrid qualities that are unique to contemporary Japan.

April 2003:

David Thorpe + others: THE GOLDEN RESISTANCE (Tate Britain)

Performance art and cabaret have a renewed appeal for the emergent generation of artists in London. Tate Britain hosted a night which platformed a cross-section of artists' performance featuring new work by artists who have built personal mythologies from fragments of popular culture. David Thorpe presented a choreographic spectacle deriving from his invented 'world', depicted in his collages, titled, "The Mighty Lights Community Project". Using hand-made props and costumes and a group of amateur performers, painter Lali Chetwynd brought Richard Dadd's 'The Fairy-Feller's Master-Stroke' (1855-64) to life in a combined exploration of the artist's biographical history - he murdered his own father and created the painstaking work in an asylum - and the magical theme of his painting.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Brothers Quay, Steve Martland: DEATH & RESURRECTION (Tate Modern)

The evening contrasted a sublime and unquestioning expression of Christian belief with an exploration of the inner world and feelings of children, in two iconic London settings that most powerfully represent the religious and the secular. The evening began in St Paul's Cathedral with a performance of three Bach Cantatas by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. At the end of this performance, the audience were led by conductor and choir, across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern. At Tate Modern, the Monteverdi Choir performed Steve Martland's Street Songs, a song collection that uses traditional childrens' rhymes including Poor Roger, Oranges and Lemons, Green Gravel and Jenny Jones, which are about children's enactments of adult rituals surrounding the ideas of death and resurrection. The Brothers Quay made four short animated films, illuminating these songs.

May 2003:

Lloyd Newson, DV8: COST OF LIVING (Tate Modern)

An exploration of class, culture and confectionary. Marvel at the hoop girl… Gasp at the bearded lady… Leer at the beauty contestants… Be amazed by the fat dancer… On the way to the top, see who gets dropped. A promenade performance through Tate Modern starting in the Turbine Hall and winding through to Level 7, incorporating dance, circus, physical daring and visual spectacle. Newson combined specially conceived new material, video projections and soundtrack elements from DV8's stage production 'the cost of living'.

Carlos Amorales: AMORALES v AMORALES (Tate Modern)

Working with professional Mexican Wrestlers, Carlos Amorales choreographed a one-off wrestling match performance titled 'Amorales v Amorales' in the Turbine Hall for Tate & Egg Live. Amorales' work examines identity, role-play, and spectacle in the contexts of dance culture and popular Mexican wrestling. Using masks and costumes, including 'branded' sportswear called 'flames' designed by the artist, Amorales explores the extent to which it is possible to play out fantasy and swap identity through costume and ritualized movement.

Nick Cave (Tate Britain)

A specially created performance from one of the few genuinely maverick songwriters and performers of the present day. Cave admits to the influence of a handful of poets - Auden, Thomas Hardy amongst them, and song writers Dylan and Van Morrison although he is still clearly inventing his own traditions as can be heard on the new album Nocturama, which was featured at this concert.

June 2003:

hobbypopMUSEUM: THE MELODY OF DESTINY (Tate Britain)

Dusseldorf-London based collective hobbypop created a site-specific performance for Tate Britain. Using the British history painting gallery and the gardens outside as backdrops, hobbypopMUSEUM explored the common properties of painting and electronic music in this piece, expressing a romantic fascination with the magical ability to make electronic evocations of sounds of water, thunder, wind or birdsong alongside the painter's ability to describe images of nature in paint.

July 2003:

Gogol Bordello: MULTI CONTRA CULTI VS IRONY (Tate Modern)

New York's Gogol Bordello performed in the Turbine Hall in July 2003. Gogol Bordello's 'gypsy punk cabaret' has been described as a "combination of reckless fervour, foot-stomping rhythms, outlandish lyrics and a circus of surreal stimuli that leaves progressive minded music fans spinning in their wake". Drawing upon Gypsy, Slavic and punk-rock traditions, Gogol Bordello is the genesis of a new aesthetic that bridges the gap between Eastern European and Gypsy influence with Western culture. The band's lyrics spin darkly humorous, macabre tales of the immigrant experience and relays aspects of many recent diasporic realities. Gogol Bordello creates for us all a uniquely infectious spectacle that offers up nothing short of a new, free-for-all theatre of anarchy.

Steve McQueen, Jessye Norman (Tate Britain)

World premiere collaboration between visual artist Steve McQueen and soprano Jessye Norman. Norman responded to McQueen's screening of his video work '7 November', a monologue telling the story of a man who accidentally shot his own brother.

August 2003:

PJ Harvey (PJ Harvey) (Tate Modern)

Since the release of her astonishing debut album 'Dry' (1991), PJ Harvey has enjoyed enormous critical acclaim and worldwide success. Following two previous nominations she was awarded the Mercury Music Prize in 2001 for her sixth album 'Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea', the first female artist to receive the award. This performance was the first ever rock concert staged at Tate Modern.

Guy Bar Amotz + Jasmin Vardimon: THE DANCE MACHINE (Tate Britain)

For The Dance Machine, a short performance by choreographer Jasmin Vardimon animated Guy Bar Amotz's soundsystem. Using electronic sensors, the soundsystem translated movement into sound and music. Members of the audience were invited to interact with the machine after the performance. Guy Bar Amotz makes sculptural installations which play music and refer to the structure of 'soundsystems'. Using a variety of dance theatre approaches, Jasmin Vardimon's choreography centres upon her acute observation of human physical behaviour, and character interaction. Vardimon has often worked with artists from different disciplines including animation, music and design to create an integrated, theatrical experience.

September 2003:

Wolfgang Tillmans: FILM WITH MUSIC, WORDS AND SINGING (Tate Britain)

Following his recent successful filmmaking venture with Lights (Body) 2001, and a video completed for the Pet Shop Boys, artist Wolfgang Tillmans created a new film for Tate & Egg Live, screened in the Duveen galleries at Tate Britain. 'Film with music, words and singing' was screened to coincide with his exhibition at Tate Britain, as the final event of the Tate and Egg live series.

November 2003:

Merce Cunningham: ANNIVERSARY EVENTS (Tate Modern)

In a unique commission, celebrating both the silver anniversary of Dance Umbrella and the golden anniversary of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Anniversary Events continued Cunningham's Events series, developing performances for non-traditional public spaces. Cunningham uses the principles of 'chance' to choreograph movements for a specific space, drawing on both past choreography as well as new works.

These promenade performances created a singular opportunity for the dancers to move in, around, and through The Weather Project, Icelandic/Danish artist Olafur Eliasson's new commission for The Unilever Series at Tate Modern. Meanwhile, the audience becomes part of the landscape. Eliasson is known for his elemental installations and sculptures using light, steam, water, fire, wind and ice.

Music elements were performed and directed by Takehisa Kosugi and two additional contemporary composers/musicians and integrated into the performance at the site. Costumes were by James Hall with lighting by Josh Johnson.