Episode 5 The Culture Show

Hello and welcome to the Culture Show from the Larmer Tree Festival

where I'm delighted to host my very own and very muddy film club.

Coming up I'll get into the Olympic spirit by taking part in a relay

race with a difference. Here's what else is in the running this week:

Artist Chris Ofili's Titian inspired works. Actress Fiona

Shaw's passion for poetry and Tate Modern's shiny new oil tanks.

First up, Turner Prize winning artist Chris Ofili whose latest

work is part of a collaboration with the Royal Ballet. Alan Yentob

explains all. When the artist Chris Ofili was

asked to design a set and costumes for the Royal Ballet he said he

felt like a lamb to the slaughter. He had no idea what ballet design

involved. Then he turned back to the story and inspiration at the

heart of the ballet. Titian's paintings of Diana, which depict

mythical tales taking from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which the young

hunter spies on die yama whilst she's bathelinging with her nymphs.

Diana turns him no a stag and he's torn apart by the hounds. Ovid's

Metamorphoses's imagine aegs was -- ofili's imagination was ignited.

This is an ambitious dlabraigs. Chris Ofili is one of three

contemporary artists and an array of choreographers and poets who are

asked to team up and create a ballet and new works of art in

response to Titian's master pieces, which will all be displayed

together at the National Gallery. So as well as the set design and

the costumes. Chris has also made ten new paintings for the

exhibition. They've just arrived in London from his home in Trinidad.

But there's not enough space to hang all of them. So with the help

of the show's curator, Mina, he needs to decide which will stay and

which will go. Just swap these two, the green for the pink. That's

really working now. These two now. Did this significant body of work,

which is very powerful, did you have to embark on this before you

decided on exactly how you saw the set and... I tell you right, first

thing, it wasn't easy, this whole process wasn't easy. It was two

years, but the first year was just not sleepless nights, but just

thinking, "what am I doing here?" how did I end up saying yes to this

one? The classics, which I didn't study at all, so I had a little bit

of help and a friend in Trinidad who studied classics. He was able

to just tell me, like, the basics of it. And actually there's nothing

special about it. Humans don't change. We pretty much do the same

things as they did all those years ago. So, then I was able to exhale

and think OK, it's all right. I can just make some of this up. I was

liberated by painting the back drop at Purfleet, which was the biggest

painting I've made. It's quite amazing you did that because very

few artists today would actually paint the back drop themselves.

paint a line for a minute and walk with it was something I'd never

really done before. It made me think a lot about how simple things

I don't want to take it out, but let's take it out. I think you may

have to find another room. Alan is lobbying for me. We've got loads of

If I were to continue, I think the whole thing could get a lot darker.

There's a very bright won -- wonderful side when the nymphs are

bathing, but then it all turns and gets very, very dark. I do wonder

at some point why Diana got so angry. It's funny. Aren't you

overdoing it a little bit? Yeah. seems a little heavy handed. It's

as if the whole environment has been infected by this sort of spell

of Diana's, this moment. Right. There are times when you go walking

in the forest in Trinidad and the destination would be a water fall.

You do feel like the whole thing is just infected with this particular

feeling, that's very unique and very private. When I started

reading about Ovid I could immediately identify with that

feeling of that sacred space, where you can be naked or you can be

without fear. This sensuality that we're talking about, which is here

all around us, you see it in the costumes as well. The nymphs wear

all in one, figure-hugging lycra suits. What I did, I drew on the

suits while they were wearing them and those areas were cut out to

reveal parts of their flesh to give the audience that feeling that

they're naked, semi-naked and just to heat the whole thing up a bit.

It's so mysterious, a hole-in-the- wall. This is pretty much the set.

The magic moment will be when the dancers in costume come on the

One of the things I think is again so appropriate about your

involvement in this project is that you go somewhere surprising and

strange and foreign, but also, very absorbing. It's like you enter this

world. I can see it all as I look at these pictures, this magical

environment in which a theatre is, you open. You sign up to believe

that what happens within this box, which is 50 times bigger than that

box over there, is real for 35 minutes, before ice-cream time.

It's that wonderful feeling that we, as human beings, still like to play

make-believe and have a dolls' house and move things around. It's

far more sophisticated than that, but it's still that wonderful thing

that we like to make things ourselves. So here we are now,

we've got, there are ten paintings. Have you yet made your mind up?

think... I have a room in my house I could fit one in. Yeah? Good,

keep the door open. We'll bring them in.

Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 is at the National Gallery until

September 23. You can see more about the project in Imagine on BBC

One next Tuesday. Now, Peace Camp is another London

2012 collaboration between director Deborah Warner and actress Fiona

Shaw, a celebration of both love poetry and the beauty of Britain's

coastal landscape. Cerys Matthews went to find out more.

The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared and mer Rhyl did we drop

below... I collect poetry like I do music. I go back to my favourites

time and time again. They age really well, the more you go back

to them, the more they can reward. "Higher and higher every day, till

over the mast at noon... # " These days lyrical poetry plays

such a tiny part in our day-to-day lives, which is a shame because

there's over a thousand years worth of material to plunder and enjoy. I

am a wind on the sea. I am a wave of the ocean. I am the roar of the

sea. I am the meaning of poetry. I am a spear on the attack. I am the

God who fires your mind. This dates back to about the 11th

century from the book of invasions. It's the song of Amer -- Song of

Amergin. This summer one of the most

intriguing commissions of the cultural Olympian is Deborah Warner

and Fiona Shaw's Peace Camp, eight glowing encampments set in romantic

sites in the most remote and rugged reaches of the British coastline.

From the Isle of Lewis to Cornwall, Northern Ireland to Anglesey, as

the sun sets, the coast will light up and start to speak to us in

verse. "Sweet Heart, sweet heart, do not

love too long. I loved long and long and long. And grew to be out

of fashion." Here we are at the test site. It's like a dress

rehearsal. It is. They're nice dresses! They look like pods, like

poetry pods or eggs even. How did you hatch this idea? Well, it's

really hatched by Deborah Warner, who was asked to do something like

this for the Olympiad and just thought to affect landscape.

Landscape is the basis of it. You have got the sea. You've got land.

To make people wonder and be with themselves in land and look at land

in a different way. The moment you put the pods down, you're looking

at the world in a different way. You think, are there huemans in

them. Are people chatting. "How many years are there left to cross

over and show you things themselves, not my idea of things ." The tents

contain speakers playing love poetry and music. How did you

collect the poetry? I went all over the country to hear different

voices and I was hoping to hear poems I didn't know before and

sometimes I did. In Scotland, there was a fantastic poem called Dark

Ellen. It's about a woman who says, you came and burnt down my house.

Killed my brothers and sisters. You killed my father and I love you.

This is a shocking kind of amoral poem which tells you everything

about the unlegislated area of love in the mind. That was a really good

find. Sometimes we offered poems to people, famous poems, iconic poems,

you can go from Shakespeare to John Donne and Robert Burns. Going

around here you can hear snippets of poetry. How did you choose?

had about 560 poems recorded. You mix up these islands of England and

Ireland and Scotland and Wales and make different, the sounds would

bring out the truth of these "On the French coast the light

gleems and is gone..." Musician Mel Mercier has created an on site

sound escape. I'm trying to create an environment or texture in which

the poems can live so that the voices then are really like music.

I love the way twouf pieces of poetry and one line from one a

familiar one and a poem I don't know but it makes you look at them

different. Absolutely. A lot is that by listening to the seniority

of the voices and seeing which ones work well together and then they

start a dialogue with each other and it's really unexpected and you

hear the reasonances from one being amplified by the other and they

cross over each other. I feel like I am on some mad moonscape and

start to work like you have no I sometimes feel when you say the

word poetry, it's like the word jazz, it repels people more than it

can attract people. How do you think people are going to react to

this? I hope that they'll come with a bottle of beer in their hand or a

glass and I hope they'll wander and I hope they don't speak too much to

their mates, just listen and see what they hear and nobody's trying

to teach them anything. You are are just trying to evoke a pit of you,

the erotic bit of you, the bit that's lost love or gained love or

wants to love and these poems hold the memory of all the people who

have loved. So you are plugging into a lot of love. If ever any

beauty out at sea which I desired and got, it was but a dream of

And you can join the Peace Camp at various locations around the UK

from tomorrow until Sunday. Next, two huge oil tanks

decommissioned since 981 will now be used to house performance and

live art at Tate Modern. Alice ter Souke went to survey the gallery's

sleek new spaces. Huge underground tanks, formerly

used to hold millions of litres of oil which fuelled one of London's

biggest power stations. Certainly not your average location

to house exhibitions. For the past two years Tate Modern

has been transforming its basement into the world's first museum space

solely dedicated to life performance art and film.

Live performance has always been an essential component of avant-garde

culture throughout the 20th century but preserving it has been tricky

for museums and galers because if you miss the show that's it, until

now. The Tate's oil oil are being touted as the most exciting spaces

to displace art anywhere in the world which is quite a bold claim.

The big question is, can they live up to the hype?

Joining me to look at one of the empty tanks is someone who's used

to performing in unusual spaces, the choreographer and dancer Akram

Wow, yeah. It's bigger than I thought it would be. It's

incredible. I know they're if finishing touches going on outside

but that atrium, I wasn't entirely convinced by but this feels like a

coherent, nicely concentrated focused space. I like also is it's

circular and it's rare you get that, it feels like you are back in the

gladator era where people can sit around but it has huge

possibilities. Immediately you feel that? You are thinking if I were

making a work here I would utilise the fact it's in the round?

course, you are 360 degrees. I thought OK the audience is going to

be around and them looking towards the centre, the gravitas is towards

the centre. Yeah, it's extraordinary. I quite like the

fact these tanks have a real purpose. They will be for live

performance and filmworks, but I did wonder before coming whether

they would feel austere, like a Castle but like a Castle dungeon

where you are shunted off into the depths, the bowels of the building.

How do you feel about that? first place I look is for the

dungeon and I always wished I had a basement. It's very private and you

are below everything else that's happening above, the creativity but

in a sense what's wonderful, if you think of it conceptually is

everything starts from the roots. In a sense, maybe what happens here

will influence what happens above. What's beautiful about live art,

it's important to have the intimacy, to feel you are sharing the same

space. In a traditional theatre you are - the stage is separate to you

and you are in the audience here, even if you stand on the side I

feel I am part of the work. Akram and I were given a sneak

preview of rehearsals for the first performance in the South Tank, a

reworking of a minimalist dance piece by the Belgian choreographer

You know that piece really well. Do you feel it was at all different

given that it was in a new space? have seen it many times, many

places. It's definitely different. How has it changed? Because of the

atmosphere of the space itself. If she had done it somewhere else,

maybe the subtly might have been felt differently. It's a seminal

piece of work because it's so minimal, yet so complex. It's

extremely complex in its simplicity. I think that's the best way to

How much does the space where you are making a work, define what the

work is? At the moment you are doing something which is the

opposite of intimate. You are doing a piece for the opening ceremony of

the Olympics. With the Olympics I made it outside the stadium, but we

are kind of rehearsing in the stadium and when we do you have to

reshape the whole choreography and rechange stuff for it to be - to be

in the right format for a stadium. I think the same goes here, you

know. We are used to traditionally used to a proscenium theatre, where

there is a space, there's a fourth wall and that's the audience. Here,

it's hard not to be influenced because you don't know where the

audience is. Focusing on film and live live performance art feels

timely as these artforms have become increasingly fashionable.

They feel refreshingly independent of the art market. The new spaces

at Tate Modern aim to show a diverse body of work. In the South

Tank over 15 waoeubgs nine -- weeks nine different performance artists

will engage with the space in a variety of ways. The East Tank will

be dedicated to one piece of work, the first commission is a complex

video installation by the south I think the transformation of these

two tanks is rather special. I am pleased that at last Tait has this

permanent bastion to two aspects of contemporary art and performance

and film that are potentially more vulnerable because they're

ephemeral. I think there may be a risk that these distinctive spaces

will dominate whatever is shown within them, but they still throb

with drama and possibility. And I am excited to see how artists in

the future will go about using them. Now, I realise that I may not have

the sporting physique necessary for a relay race but a Hansel film is a

movie marathon of short films taking place from Shetland to

Southampton and back. I was eager to pick up the baton in Berwick-

upon-Tweed and get up to speed with their progress so far.

For the last five weeks a group of energetic Brits have been involved

in a nationwide relay with a difference. No, not the Olympic

torch, these runners have been transported hundreds of short films

around the country. It's not a competition, but a celebration of

home grown local cinema. And let's not forget mighty oaks from little

acorns grow. A young Christopher Nolan used

short film to experiment with surreal special effects. Tim Burton

to sketch out his gothic fantasy world.

And hart-you hart--- hard-hitting realist to win an Oscar. The short

film offerings from Hansel's Hollywood wannabes will be

transported torch-like around 23 arts venues in the UK. The relay

culminates in a roundup of 100-odd films at the annual film festival

screenplay which I co-curate. Hansel is a Shetland word for gift,

the sharing of each community's cinematic fair at the heart of this

project. Creativity has been seeping from the walls of every

town along the way. Around 300 film-makers have submitted work and

so far we have had poetic pieces, darkly comic motion animations, and

poignant documentaries. One of my personal favourites is

Stkopl by Asockalypse. Guys, stop It's shaping up as a Hansel of film

favourite, tell me about making it. It's obviously Night of The Living

Dead. You were originally going to call it? Night of The Linen Dead.

We made it entirely inside a washing machine box so we got the

packaging and built the room inside there. You get four people crammed

into a washing machine box and a camera in there. They weren't

related but they might as well have been. There's been a great response

to the Hansel callout for short films, why do you make them because

you have ambitions to be a feature film-maker or do you enjoy making

short film themselves? I suppose it beats stamp collecting. The calibre

of short films is truly impressive and I am intrigued to see what's on

offer at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Yes, here comes James with the

films for tonight! Hello, James. You have the reel for to us take.

Can I take it off you. Ladies and Hansel 2012 features a diverse

range of films, like this heartfelt drama About A Boy who sacrifices

Young presenter Henry debuts in this touching nature documentary.

Like a blink, they have gone and to me, that means end of summer.

Each screening is a unique window into the communities involved. As

this one ends, it's time for me to pass the baton on.

This is the musical leg of the journey. You are going to play the

films out from here and then on to the Skipton. Take it away.

MUSIC The thing I love about short film-

making is it's so democratic. Anyone can do it and right now it

seems that everyone is. And they're not doing it to make money or as a

step on a career ladder, they're making short films for the sake of

making them and that is something You can catch up with the Hansel of

film at locations around the UK until September 7th. That's about

it for this week, but if you need another culture fix go to the