BMW Tate Live: Suzanne Lacy's 'Silver Action'
Date uploaded: January 30, 2013
BMW Tate Live: Suzanne Lacy Silver Action
The Tanks at Tate Modern
Sunday 3rd February 2013, 12.00 – 17.00
Free
Part of the series BMW Tate Live: Performance Events
Scattered pages from newspapers and magazines
Tate Modern presents a new participatory artwork by artist Suzanne Lacy that deals with two key themes in public discourse - ageing and activism - in relation to the specific role of women in recent history in shaping the public agenda.
Hundreds of women over the age of sixty converge on The Tanks at Tate Modern to participate in Silver Action, a live and unscripted performance of staged conversations. UK-based women who took part in significant activist movements and protests from the 1950s to the 1980s have been invited to share their personal stories in a series of workshops, culminating in this day-long public performance. Diverse groups of women engage in discussion about their experiences and the impact and results of their actions as they walk among them. Live documentation of the conversations - film, social media and text – is also projected in real time onto the walls of The Tanks.
Silver Action explores current themes in social and political discourse and the role of personal commitment in influencing the public agenda through the activist histories of British women, many of whom are now in, or entering, old age and facing new challenges. It champions the inclusion and social relevance of older women and offer new ways of looking at the ageing experience and the role of women in social transformation.
Silver Action follows the acquisition and installation of Lacy’s Crystal Quilt 1985-87 at Tate Modern in 2012, currently on display in the Transformers. Crystal Quilt was initially conceived and experienced as a performance work, when 430 women over the age of sixty gathered in a Minneapolis shopping centre to share their views on growing older. The performance was broadcast live on television and was the culmination of the Whisper Minnesota Project, a three-year public artwork empowering and giving a voice to older women from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds.
The audience is invited to watch and listen to the conversations taking place in the space.
Silver Action is the first event in the BMW Tate Live series for 2013.
BMW Tate Live is curated by Catherine Wood, Curator, Contemporary Art and Performance, Tate and Capucine Perrot, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.
BMW Tate Live is a partnership between BMW and Tate, which focuses on performance, interdisciplinary art and curating digital space.
