New Tate Modern: Switched On

This programme contains some strong language

In the year 2000,

a building reopened on the south bank of the Thames which

created a kind of buzz around

the world, and may have changed

the way that we in Britain think

about the art of our own times.

It certainly became one of the most visited places in Britain,

and some people think it turned dirty, commercial,

old London into the most vibrant cultural city on the planet.

It was of course the old Bankside Power Station,

better known today as Tate Modern.

And now, Herzog and de Meuron, the architects behind this powerhouse

of modern and contemporary art have added a new extension,

the Switch House, which promises to electrify our understanding

of culture and our place in it all over again.

The ten-storey twisted ziggurat contains three huge new floors

of gallery space and a viewing platform at the top,

with spectacular 360 degree views of London.

I'm arriving from the old Riverside entrance, through which 5 million

people a year come to see major shows by the greats of 20th-century

art and celebrated figures who are making art in our own times.

And I'm coming in through the new Switch House entrance

at the back, which promises to boost numbers even further

with the allure of new displays which will challenge some of us

to question what we today view as art.

And here we are meeting on the bridge

of the gigantinormous Turbine Hall...

..that joins the old boiler house to the new Switch House and tanks.

Welcome to the new, improved Tate Modern.

The most important event in Britain's cultural calendar

is being marked tonight with a big opening party.

Guests have already started to arrive below us,

and by tonight, this vast hall will be packed with some of the

most influential movers and shakers from the international art world.

I always go round my neighbours' house

when they've built a new extension,

because, you know, this is the opening of the biggest patio in Britain this week.

I'm looking forward to seeing their water feature!

It's so huge. I can't believe how big it is,

it's like, what, ten floors or something. It's giant.

I've only made it up to the fourth floor so far, so I've got six to go.

I think it's gorgeous. It's like brick pornography.

It's just beautiful.

What I love about the building and the vibe is it just feels

really inclusive, it does genuinely feel like it's for everyone.

Since Tate Modern opened,

they've really changed the landscape for visual arts in this country.

But this celebration doesn't just mark the opening of a new building.

It's also about a radically different approach to hanging

the existing collection right across Tate Modern.

Later this evening,

we'll hear from some of those who were lucky enough to get a sneak

preview of the new building and the new displays as they came together,

without having to fight their way through the heaving crowds.

In 2000, I always said it was, like, the most romantic place to be,

in London. "I'll meet you underneath the spider."

-And here we are.

-And here we are!

And we will perhaps get a rather less reverential take from this duo.

It's just screen prints, innit? It's just endless screen prints.

Done factory-like along there, and then he runs out of ink.

I'll also get an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour with

Tate Modern's first female director, Frances Morris.

This is my favourite sleepover position.

You're going to have queues for this bit.

The transformation of this secular cathedral to modern

and contemporary art, at a cost of £260 million,

of which £58 million is taxpayers' money, has not been

without controversy, and has in fact divided the art congregation itself.

I'll be talking to one fervent believer,

who thinks this is £260 million very well spent.

And to a dissident member of the flock,

who takes a slightly different view.

£260 million at a time

when Britain's just come out of a recession.

Art is a brilliant revenue maker.

You know, this is the most visited contemporary art museum in the world.

But first, I spoke to the driving force behind this

transformation of Tate Modern, Sir Nicholas Serota.

Nick Serota, we're sitting on the viewing platform at the top of this remarkable

new building, we can hear building work going on all around us.

It's a very, very big moment for you.

Well, it's a very exciting moment for London, and for

the United Kingdom, and for the art world as a whole.

Some people will say the original Tate Modern was such a vast

space, that huge Turbine Hall, all those galleries,

why on earth do you need to make it even bigger?

Well, the original Tate Modern was London's first museum of modern art,

we were one of the few capital cities in the world

that didn't have a museum of modern art, and when we opened it,

we expected two million people to come in a year,

we got five million and it's stayed at that level ever since.

So, we need more space for the people, we need more space for

the art that we've bought since 2000,

and London is a great international city, and it can certainly take

a museum the size we've made.

You've raised a huge amount of money to do this,

and some people will say, "Hold on a second, here we are, times are still tough out there,

"lots of people are struggling to put bread on the table

"and so on, it's just not worth it, there they go again, the elites."

Well, we have about £50 million of public money in the building

itself. We've raised over £200 million from the private sector,

but at a moment like this, it is a difficult moment,

but I think that people also need art in their lives, and artists are

making commentary about some of the big issues of the day.

They're talking about immigration, they're talking about migration,

they're talking about climate change,

so I make no apologies for creating a museum, during a recession,

that will now be here for 50 or 100 years.

What's going to be the difference between the art in the new

buildings and the art in the older building?

Well, we're treating the whole building as one,

it's not a new and an old,

and we're going to re-hang the whole collection.

The big change that people will see is that we have

a much more international view of the world.

Since 2000, we've been buying work from across Asia, North Africa,

the Middle East.

I think we've recognised that some of the

great art made in the world in the

last 50 years has been made beyond north-west Europe

and beyond North America.

We're bringing it to London.

London has this dialogue with many other cities in the world.

One of the key new exhibits being installed as part

of Tate Modern's multinational display is this large-scale

installation, Behold, by Indian artist Sheela Gowda.

-Just in the air so it doesn't fall off if somebody moves the rope.

-OK.

Made of smooth steel car bumpers suspended on the wall by four

kilometres of human hair, it's

sure to challenge not only the public's perception of what

constitutes art, but also the skills of the Tate's conservation team.

One of the great things about working in an institution like the

Tate Modern is that we are actually able to work with artists that are

using really innovative materials, materials that are not standard.

Hair was something that obviously, you know,

is quite challenging, because it's

got to be treated, you've got to make sure no bugs get into it.

So, this should be on the top...

And we're really proud to have this very important

work, by an artist that we think is one of the leading Indian

female artists of her generation,

to be in the building when the new Tate Modern opens.

-I think that's all our questions for the moment.

-Goodbye.

-OK, bye.

I am Sheela Gowda.

I live in Bangalore in South India.

When I worked towards Behold,

I had with me already the raw material for it,

at least one part of it, which is the hair rope.

I had been seeing this hair rope wound around car bumpers

for a long time.

I think it's used on the vehicle as a talisman,

as a warding off against accidents, I guess.

The next aspect of the work was to bring in the bumpers.

Just to have steel as a hard

industrial metallic substance versus the organic hair, and I thought

having the steel heavy elements being held up by the ropes was

already a certain statement,

because each rope has probably hundreds of individuals'

hair within it, of all genders, ages, communities,

so it was really a coming together of people,

and that was a starting point of that work.

This is one of my favourite rooms,

and it just says so much about my ambition for Tate Modern.

So many great women in the 20th century have been overlooked,

and of course there are many really important women working today,

in a very experimental way, so this work with human hair and car

bumpers, it's an installation that defies all the categories.

How'd you think the public are going to respond to this work?

It reminds me of being in the black hairdressers with all those extensions.

There will be young people, people that won't quite get it.

-Do you think it's important to bring work in that's...?

-What have they got to get?

What you've just said is fantastic. It reminds me of my grandmother's knitting.

Those responses are perfect.

She's female, she's Indian. Is it part of your global ambition as well to bring more global artists in?

Yeah, because we live in one of the most cosmopolitan

cities in the world, our audiences are incredibly diverse,

and we want to celebrate that diversity of contemporary and 20th-century practice.

It is great to see Sheela here.

I know in 2010 the percentage of female artists at the Tate was 17%.

What is it now?

Well, in relation to the solo presentations and the pairings, 50%.

And that's really, I think, a great achievement.

I think Tate has been very focused on trying

to engage a broader public

with some of the really extraordinary achievements

of cultural figures in the course of the 20th and 21st-century.

So, that is not about bringing women in just for the sake of it,

these are ordinary works of art.

I'm excited to show you this thing.

This is one of our new spaces in the Switch House.

I can see why you are excited. It's an amazing space.

So, we've got a range of sculpture from the 1960s to now,

made by British and international artists, that really show

that moment in the 1960s when artists started using

new, surprising materials,

industrial materials like steel or mirror, aluminium.

So, very experimental, very dynamic, and these works need

lots of space and lots of light, and you need to walk around them,

see yourself reflected, and we can look in the Kusama if you like.

Oh, my God, that's incredible in here.

So, you know, it's kind of an infinity mirror cube.

Hello!

Marisa Merz, Italian artist.

This was actually hanging in her living space, a kind of...

I don't know, organic jungly thing. A forest of aluminium.

So, this step change in looking at the world in a more

international way, where does the role of the British artists now

stand in the new Tate?

Well, they're here. There's Mary Martin.

There's Rachel Whiteread.

There's Tony Cragg there,

but also David Medalla from the Philippines.

So, what you're seeing in this room is both a number of really major

British artists, but artists from other places who came and made their

lives in Britain and made the scene the kind of rich scene

that it is today.

These are new, exciting spaces that will obviously attract

a younger generation already coming to the gallery.

Do you think they make a distinction between British artists

and international artists?

I don't think they give it a moment's thought,

and what's fantastic about bringing young children, young people

into the gallery, is that they don't have those prejudices,

and it's absolutely crucial that we excite them,

because if they get attracted and interested

in what we're doing now, they will become curious, intelligent,

creative individuals, and in a way, that's what the Tate is about,

it's about enhancing people's lives through their encounter with art.

-THEY SHOUT:

-Art School!

The first members of the gallery-going public to be given

access-all-areas to the fully completed new Tate Modern

were 3,000 children from 100 schools across the country.

They were invited to give their often frank

opinions of the new displays.

I didn't know that, like, this was art.

-Is that art for you?

-No. That's weird.

-It's just weird?

Well, it is art, because everything's art.

-Art is something...anyone can do it.

-Something creative.

Yeah, you do what you want to do.

It doesn't have to be perfect, you can make art like this.

Michael Craig-Martin,

you were part of the bringing forward of the great movement of

young British artists, all those people like Damien Hirst

and Tracey Emin and so forth that we remember so well.

Do you think art education has deteriorated in this country

since the 1980s and the 1990s?

To be honest, I think we went through a golden age

of art education in Britain from the '60s

up until sometime into the '90s.

Since then, almost everything that has happened has involved

a dramatic decline in education.

And so, if that nurturing has vanished, more or less,

then it's a very, very bleak outlook for art in this country.

However, you could argue that

a place like this, a project like the extension of Tate Modern,

allows people to come,

at least to learn and look and start again.

I think one of the most essential things for young people

is to see the best of what's being done in their own time,

and what Tate Modern does is it brings...

We have in this room things that are now historically important

up to things that are very current.

The impact of seeing the best on a young person is immensely important.

It's quite disturbing in some ways.

I mean, it's...just lots of reflections,

almost looks like someone's trapped.

We live in an age now which is relentlessly described as digital,

and there is a lot of digital art and there is interactive art.

How important is that going to be here and in bringing in

the next generation of tomorrow's artists?

It's very, very obvious that there's a change in sensibility.

Young people who were brought up with computers and screens

and all this stuff, they've never

known a world without them, they're involved in social media.

Now, even if the work that they do is not itself digital,

it cannot possibly not be affected by this dramatic change

in the forms of social engagement.

Someone who is fascinated by the digitally savvy generation,

and the way they interact with each other and the art of their time,

is the psychotherapist Philippa Perry.

So, she set out, selfie-stick in hand, to find out what makes them tick,

or rather, click.

Squeeze your head in!

Oh, I like that! Ready?

Welcome to Generation Selfie,

a generation born into a digital world

and reared on Instagram and Snapchat.

In the time it's taken for me to say this,

#me has already topped 351 million.

What distinguishes this lot from other generations is that they

document their lives with images, not words.

But it's narcissism gone mad.

Preening self-importance, vacuous vanity.

Isn't it?

Our culture is full of cautionary tales about the dangers

of falling in love with ourselves.

In Greek mythology, Narcissus died from gazing into a pool

reflecting his own beautiful image. And in Disney's famous cartoon,

children were left in no doubt as to what kind of person embraces vanity.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"

That's the negative cultural baggage we all carry around with us,

except for this whole generation appear to have shrugged that off.

You look so good...

So, here's the question for the Selfie Age -

are we all self-regarding narcissists,

or is there something more interesting going on?

The ever-expanding iPalette of art is out there for all of us

to use, but some have taken it further than most.

The last room of Tate Modern's recent "Performing For The Camera"

exhibition features the photos of Amalia Ulman, a young

selfie star hooked on fashion, fake boobs and celebrity.

Or at least that's what we all thought she was when she exploded

onto the scene in 2015, with over 88,000 Instagram followers.

Because, you see, Amalia is in fact an artist who,

over a period of several months,

created a whole fictional world on Instagram

as an LA It-girl, and this artwork is the result.

To help me work out how and why she constructed this selfie alter ego,

I met up with two members of Tate Collective,

a forum for young creatives.

So, Amalia, what's going on here?

It comes across as quite provocative,

she's almost asking you to buy into what she's selling.

And what is she selling?

Well, she's selling the dream of being a star.

We're a strange generation, the artist included.

When I grew up and got told that, like, I'd meet a nice guy,

we'd hold hands and go on walks through parks,

and now dating happens on Tinder. People just swipe left, swipe right.

You've got to show the best side of you straight away. We make judgments instantly.

And I think Amalia has actually brought us round back to that,

because by saying, "Ha-ha, I know I'm fake, and this is all fake",

she's exposing the whole charade

of the way we present ourselves online.

Shall we do a selfie now, actually? There we go. In, in, in, in...

Oh, I love that.

Now that digital art is the new kid on the block and can just as easily

be accessed on everyone's phones and laptops at home,

the Tate curators are going to have to rise to the challenge

and present it in the most dynamic way possible.

Digital art is still an area they're exploring, but all set to

animate the Switch galleries are new

photographic and video artworks,

collected by Tate Modern since it opened in 2000.

In fact, 75% of all works on display across the entire site have been

acquired over the last 16 years,

so visitors can expect to see some firm favourites

like Carl Andre's bricks, "Equivalent VIII",

as well as lots of new surprises.

And many of these will be coming from the Tate's secret stores,

tucked away here in the deepest English countryside.

But I can't tell you where it is, because it's a top-secret site.

And I'd have to kill you if I did!

With million-pound works at stake,

high security is the name of the game,

and nobody has been allowed to film at this facility, until now.

All art museums have more works than they can show at any one time,

and these hidden vaults are where Tate store much of their vast collection.

Whoa!

It's like being in a James Bond movie!

It's just so eerie,

and I just don't know what's going to be around the corner.

It's a bit dark. Can someone turn the light on?

It's massive.

I knew it would be big, but I wasn't expecting this at all.

It's like one massive aircraft hangar. It's enormous.

Full of yellow goodies. I feel like a kid in a toy shop!

For security reasons, I can't tell you anything about the sheer scale

of the stores or even how many works are being held here.

But this massive vault with state-of-the-art temperature

and climate controls is just one of several housing large-scale

sculptures by artists from all over the world.

Jeff Koons. I wouldn't mind a bit of Koons if I had room in my house.

Barbara Hepworth.

Chapman, Chapman, Chapman.

I wonder what this is.

The greats are definitely here, aren't they?

Emin. Aah.

You don't see enough women artists because they're all in storage.

Thankfully, they're not always permanently locked away in their bright yellow cases.

Far from it, in fact.

Last year alone,

just over 1,000 works were sent from here all over the UK,

and 623 were shipped to international exhibitions.

But now, instead of being loaned to other museums and galleries,

a decent proportion of these works will take pride of place

in Tate Modern's new displays.

And one of them is by Antony Gormley.

The Tate owns eight works by the celebrated British sculptor,

who's best-known for the giant Angel Of The North

and the haunting installation Another Place.

But this piece being moved today will be the first Gormley to

go on permanent display at Tate Modern.

And, as a much-loved work that hasn't been on display here

since 2002, its arrival is hotly anticipated.

-It feels like bringing a figure back from the dead.

-Yeah.

There's its coffin coming out, lifting it up.

It will live quite soon.

It's actually really nice to see it in a white gallery.

It's so stark and sort of singular now.

It's a Wonder Woman pose.

That's great, I think Antony would like that.

-So, here it is.

-Antony. You're back at last. How does it feel?

It's great, this is the first time that I've seen it actually

in the middle of a space.

I think the presence of the door gives it an extra...

Well, I don't know, it's a bit like one of those blind doors

in an Egyptian tomb, you know.

This work was here, I think, in 2002 last, is that right?

Yeah, I think it was in the Turbine Hall,

with a load of sort of classical sculpture.

I'm much happier about this.

Frances told me that she'd put me with Agnes Martin.

It's a very austere kind of work there, I guess, isn't it?

Well, I think that's about space and about light and about distance

and about being.

It's a kind of strange, weird dating system that Tate organises.

Blind dates all around.

-You're happy with your blind date?

-I really am.

I've never been happy about associating the work with

other figurative sculpture, because I don't think of this as being...

You know, if you think of a statue, this is simply a case

made around a body, in order to make

visible the fact that it is empty and that it contains darkness,

and that this darkness is identified by these five eye-holes

that, yes, relate to...

I've called it Untitled For Francis,

because it's my tribute to Francis of Assisi who had the stigmata,

but it could equally be for Frances Morris,

who is the first senior director

of Tate Modern to be drawn from the community of this institution.

Your work is often placed well outside galleries,

on the top of buildings, on beaches, in landscape.

Is this your attempt to bring people to art?

I don't agree with this distinction between something called public art

and something called private art. All art is made to be shared.

I love seeing how the work can work in nature or on the street.

-Or in a gallery.

-Or in a gallery.

I think it's fantastic that now the Tate is welcoming more visitors

than, well, any other contemporary...

-Anything else.

-Anything else, yeah.

I'm sure that's true, and I'm also sure there are people watching this programme who

will say, "To be honest, that stuff is never going to be for me.

"I have some relation. I understand Antony Gormley sculptures, I enjoy them,

"but there's lots and lots of scary stuff here, stuff I find alienating

"and difficult. I won't come."

What would you say to those people?

I would say, "Don't let your prejudices win.

"Expose yourself to art and see what happens."

So, this is a work in progress, this is our Start Gallery.

Ah, Matisse, how beautiful. A familiar favourite.

-I love it.

-Yeah, it is gorgeous.

I think, for many people and myself included,

this is the first work that we really came to grips

with at Tate, and it's just...

I can't think of a visitor who doesn't enjoy it.

But this space is really...

It's for everybody, because it's got great iconic works -

Kandinsky, Matisse, Richter -

but it's also for people who might be

unfamiliar with art galleries,

museums, maybe it's their first

time here, who just want to get their... A little

bit of confidence or an introduction to what Tate Modern is all about.

You've put this very seductive and familiar piece next to

a collection which, in style,

looks familiar, but, again, a new artist.

Old friends, new friends. The whole point is to expand horizons.

So, beautiful collages by Indian artist Benode Mukherjee,

but there's a big stretch in here. You know, iconic works like Matisse,

but also we've got a work of art in the form of a till receipt in the next gallery.

-There will be questions.

-You tell me about it!

I've never looked at my Sainsbury's till receipt as a work of art, admittedly.

The whole thing about this gallery is we've got playful conceptual work

and then we've got just drop dead gorgeous,

wonderful moments from history.

To find out whether these unorthodox pairings will appeal to

visitors, we invited two amateur artists, Jim Moir and Matthew Hill,

perhaps more familiar to most as comedians Vic Reeves and Harry Hill,

to give their verdict.

-What about Andy Warhol?

-Yes.

-Have you ever seen him without his wig on and his specs?

-No.

You wouldn't know him at all.

When I was at art school, this, I thought, was really cool,

but now I look at it and it seems a bit tarnished and old-fashioned.

I think it still looks very fresh.

It looks like it could have been done ten years ago.

It's just screen prints, innit? It's just endless screen prints.

Done, factory-like, and along there.

And then he runs out of ink.

Well, it's a good opener.

Yeah. Let's see what's through here.

-The Guerrilla Girls, do you know them?

-I think I'm right in thinking

that the Guerrilla Girls fashioned

themselves as the conscience of the art world.

Do women have to be naked to get into the Met?

Yeah.

Do you have any favourite women artists?

Um. Yes, I do. Um...

Come on, they should be on the tip of your tongue!

No, I am trying to think of her first name. Louise Bourgeois.

-I love her stuff.

-Those big spiders.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-So, we've got the Guerrilla Girls on one side...

-Yeah.

..and there's Warhol with Marilyn on that side.

I think what Sir Nicholas is thinking, and it's

quite heavy-handed...

He's got the ultimate sex symbol versus the feminists.

Which would win? There's only one way to find out!

-I don't say that any more!

-Yeah. Let's move on.

Behold, the Tower of Babel.

I think it might look better if it had smoke or steam

-coming out the top of it.

-Yeah.

-Or Steve Wright.

-There's a bit of that.

Yeah. There's a bit of the Post Office tower about it.

How about Roy Lichtenstein? Do you like him?

Well, I'm a fan of pop art.

-This is the Korean War, isn't it?

-Is it?

I think that's a Mig.

-He's just been blown up by an American.

-Oh, is it?

Whaam!

Once you've seen one, you've seen them all,

and if you're going to see one,

that's probably the best one to see, isn't it?

So, what else have we got in here then? Why is it in here?

Do you like that one?

I don't know this artist, but I really like these.

Because I am a fan of folk art, outsider art,

and this feels very much like that to me.

-He's from Iran, apparently.

-Iran?

-Yeah.

I suppose it's... You've got Western pop art, and you've got...

-Eastern pop art?

-Middle Eastern pop art.

-Look at all this stuff.

-BEEPING

Did I just do that?

-BEEPING

-Oh, I've done it again!

-Ah.

-Now, this is my kind of a thing.

-I passed something very similar this morning.

-LAUGHTER

This is about as near as I could get to beauty.

-Really?

-It is.

I'm not kidding, either. I think this is really...

I could look at this all day. I could live in this, live amongst it,

because this is my kind of beanbag.

I admire the industry, but...

It's not quite enough for me.

I think what's really interesting about the Tate Modern

is that it has all this kind of stuff, contemporary art that

people might consider was difficult to engage with,

but it's one of the most popular tourist attractions in London.

-Is it?

-I think it is.

-For me it would be.

-Yeah.

It's the best art gallery, I think, in the world.

Yeah. It's always surprising, isn't it?

WORLDESS CHANT

The Tate curators are hoping to heighten that element of surprise

even further with their eclectic programme of new performance art

that, today, is being previewed by critics from around the world.

And this is where much of it will be staged,

in the old oil tanks that once powered the Turbine Hall engines.

This will be the arena for works that challenge the idea

of an artwork as a 2D object, works that are not easily displayed.

In short, works that do not play out to the art market.

Their conversion into new spaces dedicated to film, installation

and live performance art is the work of the internationally

renowned Swiss architects behind the original transformation of Tate Modern

and the new Switch building - Herzog and de Meuron.

The tanks are actually a huge gift.

We decided to take them literally as the foundations,

so to speak, for the new building.

So, new structure and old structure come together.

Once you are inside, you should, as a visitor, get

the feeling that this is one thing, not two things.

It's like one organism.

Of course the tanks are naturally made for, let's say,

other art forms than just the traditional ones,

so dance, performance, videos, films work very well,

but you can even have a Michelangelo or Leonardo.

Why shouldn't there be once a kind of a juxtaposition of these

different art forms in the tanks,

and then in the more traditional daylight-filled gallery?

The Tate now has the greatest diversity of different spaces,

and the great thing is that such an important museum

now has this choice.

Way below us here, we have the great tanks space,

and that's going to be used for performance art.

I wonder, is there a point here about the commercialisation

of contemporary art? Because a lot of the things that you

have on display here, or will have on display, are not things that

a rich person can hang on the wall. By definition, you can't have a

performance artist capering around your front room forever.

Well, we have a responsibility to show all kinds of art.

Sometimes we're accused of pandering to the market,

and other times we're criticised for showing work that will

never go anywhere near the market.

We have to show the full range. And many artists do not make work

that is intended to be sold.

We have a responsibility to show it, to collect it, to present it to the public.

Performance art emerged, really, in the 1960s,

and it was very much something of the street

and a certain kind of protest, it had the tang of the times about it.

Can you re-capture any of that by bringing it inside a big art gallery?

Much of the performance art from the '60s was shown

first in warehouses and in raw spaces of exactly

the kind that we have here with the tanks.

The tanks themselves were one of the factors that drew us

to this site as a site for a museum of modern art.

There is a new generation of performance artists that have

emerged in the last 10 or 15 years,

and they look very strongly back to what was happening in the '60s,

and it's a museum that can bring these two things together.

One of those artists showing in the tanks is Marvin Gaye Chetwynd,

who was the first performance artist to be nominated for the Turner Prize in 2012.

Her often improvised carnival-esque performances have been called

"bawdy and bonkers", and now the tanks will provide

the stage for one of her most explicit and challenging works.

To find out if the performance artists of today still pack

a punch like their 20th century forebears,

I spoke to critics Waldemar Januszczak and Jennifer Higgie.

so, can we start by talking about performance art,

which seems to be very au courant at the moment, people are talking

about it a lot, and it's going to dominate some of the space

in the tanks down at the bottom.

Waldemar, first of all. Performance art came out of the 1960s,

highly political, cutting-edge then, exciting and dangerous,

can you recreate that in a public institution in the 2010s?

No, you can't.

If you're talking about what performance art did in the 1960s,

it's a completely different world and a completely different situation.

The performance art that happened then by Yoko Ono or Vito Acconci,

this was cutting-edge stuff.

There was a famous, an infamous performance by Vito Acconci

in which he sat underneath a ramp at the Sonnabend Gallery

and masturbated for eight hours a day, for a couple of weeks

while the show was on.

-Is that going to happen here at Tate Modern?

-I think not.

-I don't think so.

So, this is another kind of performance art. This is performance art as a sort of crowd pleasing...

You can't really be a cutting-edge performance artist

in a building that cost £260 million.

Jennifer, nonetheless... crowd-pleasing.

Is it more than crowd-pleasing, what they're trying to achieve here with performance art?

Yeah, I think that's a slightly simplistic way of looking at it.

I mean, some of the great performances that are happening downstairs in the tanks...

This is the first museum in the world that has opened

a space that is dedicated to performance,

and I think that's a very radical thing on Tate's behalf,

and I don't think the cost of the building, actually, is relevant in this sense.

How can it not be relevant?

It's like saying you couldn't enjoy a painting in the National Gallery.

£260 million at a time when Britain's just come out of a recession?

Art is a brilliant revenue maker.

You know, this is the most visited contemporary art museum in the world.

It brings in millions of tourists.

I think that it will pay itself off very easily and very quickly.

It seems to me that one of the big gambles going on here,

is that we have a lot of international artists who are

not that familiar, to say the least, to British punters,

and to get those huge numbers in, the Tate is now going to have to

sell the reputations of those artists to a new audience.

That's a big, big ask in many cases, isn't it?

Yes. Absolutely, and I think that's one of the really exciting

things about walking around this building. I've worked in contemporary art 20 years,

and I was entering galleries, and half of the stuff I was looking at I didn't know about

and I was thrilled to see it. And I think that's an enormously

exciting sort of re-evaluation of what art history is now,

and where we are at this moment in terms of how art reflects ourselves as a society.

I think it's unquestionably a good thing that you've got art from other

countries and from places that aren't America and Western Europe

which is where it usually came from, but there's a sense in which...

Is it the very best art that's being made at the time?

I'm not sure it is. I mean, I found that, going round, I missed...

I think there's a sense in which the baby's been thrown out with the bathwater.

We've got no isms here, so we don't know really what happened -

Constructivism, Minimalism, they don't exist anymore.

I mean, for example, just take a really obvious example, you know, Picasso.

He's probably thought of now as a kind of patriarchal figure,

looked down on, so over in Tate Modern there's

hardly any Picasso, there's a couple of things scattered about.

You don't really get a sense of him.

Is that curatorial decision, or is it the fact that the Tate, back in the 20th century,

missed big periods when they could have bought

cutting-edge painters in particular and didn't?

I think it's certainly true that they didn't,

but I also think it's true they're not doing it now.

I mean, if you look back at... What are the real signature

artworks of the last 20 years? What do we all remember?

What are the important things that have been made?

Well, you know, Damien Hirst's shark, Tracey Emin's bed, the Chapman brothers' Hell.

What have they got in common?

That they're signature artworks, and that they're not here.

-Jennifer, do you agree with that?

-No, I don't agree with that.

I agree that there are gaps in the Tate Modern's collection,

but then there are wonderful paintings on display

like Picasso's Three Dancers is a very fine painting.

And this is put in dialogue with other works that were made around

the same time or possibly from different countries.

But this is an extremely bold move in terms of opening a new wing,

to start a new conversation, "We're going to include people

"in the conversation who haven't been included before."

I think we're all very used to

and perhaps a little bit tired of

the Tracey Emins, the Damien Hirsts, the Sarah Lucases.

What this display is doing is saying,

"There's another conversation to be had about the work

"that is being made in Britain in the last 20 years."

There are lots of examples of British art in the collection,

but they're just not the expected ones.

Now, we know from the past year that the thing that has really brought

people in have been the huge shows in that massive Turbine Hall,

and it's partly, I guess, people like to wander around them as well.

There is a kind of interactivity

now in new art audiences that we didn't have

perhaps when we were kids.

Yes indeed, and of course they had

some wonderful things here in that Turbine Hall.

I don't think the last few Turbine Hall commissions

have been as good as the early ones.

In a way, they've sort of exposed the real problem here which is

the size of it all, and interactivity is

an interesting thing, because, yes, people love it, they all come in.

I mean, there are things here...

There's that Brazilian sculptor who does the metal cages

where kids will throw the cushions around and stuff.

I'm sorry, but I suspect a lot of that is to do with luring

the audience in rather than making or showing them great art,

and interactivity... There's a touch of Alton Towers about it all.

You know, there are things you can jump up and down on.

-Remember the Carsten Holler slides?

-It was a helter-skelter, yes.

Yeah, that's it.

And if you'll do anything to lure people in, that means that

you're putting the popularity of your institution

ahead of anything else.

I personally don't think that there's anything wrong with luring

audiences in to have fun, because all of the artists that they're

using to lure audiences in are very good, very important artists.

This will be seen by a lot of people, nevertheless,

who are wondering, "Shall I go to Tate Modern and see for myself?"

I guess you'd both say, "Certainly, come and look for yourselves."

Well, for me, being a woman, walking around a major museum

and seeing 50% of the displays including women

artists is nothing short of revolutionary. And also I'm not

from this country, and so to see hundreds of works of art by...

Art made in other places, for me,

was an extraordinary mind-blowing experience.

Should people come? Of course they should.

I mean, it's a fantastic building, it's an amazing experience,

to walk off from the river, come in here, to see British people

liking modern art. All that is wonderful and it's revolutionary.

So of course they must come.

But there are, I think, issues. And as we clap away crazily, saying,

"Welcome the new Tate Modern," someone has to look at it as well

and say, "Hey, hang on. This... Could've done things slightly

"differently and could've been better in this way and that."

And that someone, for tonight, has been you, Waldemar!

Ladies and gentlemen, if you could keep moving down that way, please.

Keep moving, please, ladies and gents.

To test the public's willing participation in performance art,

the Tate's curators are staging this controversial work by

Cuban artist Tania Bruguera.

Ladies and gents, if you all move in for me, please. Thank you.

First performed in 2009 in Bruguera's hometown of Havana,

it was intended as a political statement about the intervention

of the state on individual freedom in Communist-controlled Cuba.

So how will the public react to this work now it's being staged

here in Tate Modern?

Well, it was all a bit Englishy really, because everyone was going,

"Terribly sorry," and "Can we take a picture of the nice horsey?"

So it wasn't a particularly radical Cuban revolution.

People were relaxed, and it flowed, and it didn't... That's

what made us realise afterwards that it was more a performance.

The best part was, they don't even have to say anything, the horse

just comes up and was tapping a man on the shoulder, and he knew to move

out of the way, so it was a very polite way to move people around.

Well, it's a funny category,

because I like the theatre and I do a lot of amateur drama myself,

but I don't really expect to find it when I come to see visual art.

So, this is a kind of classic minimalist work

that people find really hard

to get their head around, and what people don't realise

and what we don't allow people to realise is that

a lot of works of art in the 1960s weren't made to

go on plinths and behind barriers but actually were made for people to interact with.

-So, people today really want to interact with works.

-Play away.

This is a work that you can walk in, you can close the doors.

We could actually have a bit of privacy in here if we wanted.

Here we go.

That changes the mood in here immediately, doesn't it?

Yeah. And the sound.

See, works like this, on the surface, can seem pretty cold

and pretty unsociable in a sense.

Is that why you feel it's important that audiences can connect,

can physically touch, can be up close and personal?

I think they can feel very austere and distant,

but we're trying to recapture something of that energy that the

artist brought to them in the 1960s, where they were game-changing.

People really hadn't seen work like this before,

the idea that you could go into a gallery and rearrange...

I mean, this is Rashid Araeen's work, and

it was intended by the artist that the audience

-should come and rebuild it every day.

-Right.

Robert Morris's mirror cubes.

You think of a mirror as a static thing on the wall

that throws your image back at you,

but here, once these come off and you walk around it,

-it's not just you, it's the space, it's infinity.

-Wow.

I mean, these were dynamite when they were shown in the 1960s.

The artists, that generation and succeeding generations,

were really experimental, there was

a drive to do things for the first time, to do it anew,

and to kind of ask questions about the audience WITH the audience.

So, there's a kind of risk factor, the unknown,

and that's something that we've seen

duplicated in our Turbine Hall commissions -

an artist does something, then the public responds.

They don't always respond in a way you anticipate.

The Weather Project was so unique and so amazing,

and used the space so brilliantly. People lying on the floor,

just kind of letting the art wash over them was amazing.

I was actually surprised with the scale.

When you put something in the ceiling, there's

a tendency that people lean back or might sit down.

I didn't think people would lay down, because that's kind of

like on the floor in a museum. And you know how museums are,

like pretty uptight, so when that started to happen,

I was very excited.

As soon as one person did it, then a lot of people did it.

And I often thought, "Who was that? Who did it?"

I mean, who lay down for the first time?

I was drawn to it, from the...

It was heat, it was this warmth.

There was something that drew me,

physically made me want to walk towards it.

The exciting thing was, of course, that it kind of got out of control.

People started doing all kinds of things,

they brought their picnics, sat down, they lay down,

they kind of almost made love on the floor, some yoga classes came,

then there was some worshipper type of people,

and some doomy and gloomy people who would have, "Oh, apocalypse!"

So, it was really good fun in that sense.

I'd never seen that kind of interactive sculpture before.

I remember everybody saying,

"Have you been? Have you done it yet?"

The very first artist to take on the challenge of making

work to fill this vast cavernous space back in 2000

was Louise Bourgeois.

It seems nothing was too daunting for the diminutive 89-year-old who

embraced the commission with gusto.

Her deeply autobiographical installation

"I Do, I Undo, And I Redo" dominated the east end of the hall.

And looming over the bridge was her giant spider, Maman, that has become

perhaps the defining image of the Turbine Hall commissions.

As a whole room dedicated to Bourgeois's work took shape

in the new Switch building,

I caught up with two of her most ardent fans

for an intimate preview -

artist Tracey Emin, who collaborated with Bourgeois before she died,

and sculptor Phyllida Barlow.

What's your immediate response? You look shocked.

I'm feeling quite awestruck, because it's very...

high lighting, and things are in incredible high relief.

The light is nice here.

It feels wonderful, the proximity of the works in the room.

-More intimate.

-Yeah, definitely.

Is it marble?

Being able to get this close up to the work is remarkable.

And I think the red cluster is such a brilliant lure.

I'm longing to get to that point.

And I think to have an initial opening

where there's something that draws

you right in is tremendously exciting.

We're so opposite, because I'm going to the clothes.

Because I'm sure that these were Louise's actual clothes.

And knowing Louise when she was 97 and then seeing this dress...

-Is it quite emotional?

-Yeah, it is actually. It really is, because

I always think of her as this older woman who had

these giant sort of breasts, and these really strong hands,

sitting at a table, kind of shouting at me.

But now, when I see this pink dress,

and this femininity and this fragility,

I see her completely differently in my mind.

VOICE OF LOUISE BOURGEOIS: That is your interpretation,

you are entitled to your interpretation, right?

So, I say, talk for yourself.

I mean, I could swear, this is a complete mindfuck really. Totally.

-This is like...

-This is just...

one of my most landmark pieces.

-Of her work?

-Well, of possibly all sculpture.

As Tracey says, it is a mindfuck,

because it's not just drawing you in

but it's spitting you out at the same time. It's welcoming you and...

-Keeping you out.

-Exactly.

There's both hostility and, in a way, allure.

You know, I can see the cameraman there and I can see myself,

unfortunately, over there.

BOURGEOIS: 'The act of making a sculpture is to put order in discord.

'At any kind of level, otherwise the anxiety comes in.'

What do you think this particularly says about her in that period

and her state of mind at the time?

She always said her materials were her emotions.

That was a fantastic quote...

I think anybody, even if they don't know anything about art at all,

would look at this and go,

"Oh, my God." It's menacing, there's a heaviness,

something deep is going on here.

I don't say that I am a wild beast all the time,

but I'm a wild beast some of the time.

As I always say, I am not what I say, I am what I do.

For me, this one actually...

A lot of the spiders, this one is one that scares me.

You know, it's living within a kind of nightmare.

Which is also really interesting with Louise,

because she was an insomniac,

and she would write and draw all night long.

-What do you think?

-Yeah, it's brilliant.

-Daughter of Maman.

-Yes. The teenager, yeah.

It's a really lovely echo of the opening moment in 2000

to have this small version.

In 2000 I always said it was the most romantic place to be in London.

"I'll meet you underneath the spider."

-And here we are.

-And here we are!

The most exciting thing about this room, when it opens,

is the vast amount of girls between the age of 12 and 18 that are

going to come and visit here who haven't seen Louise's work before.

That is just going to be brilliant.

You're going to be... It's just going to be full of teenage girls

going, "I can be an artist. I can do it."

That's the legacy.

INTERVIEWER: Have you finished, now?

BOURGEOIS: Yes, I'm finished, thank you.

OK. That's it.

It remains to be seen whether teenage girls are really

drawn into Louise Bourgeois's web, but what is certain is that this

secular cathedral of cool has always been a Mecca for young people.

In fact, of all the people who come here,

around half are aged 35 or less.

So, what is it that brings so many teenagers and 20-somethings here,

not just to look at the art, but to hang out?

The performance poet Jemima Foxtrot explains.

The Turbine Hall brags its struck dumb size

I am young and welcomed by the Switch House

It's cuddling curves a tightening corkscrew up

A view of London's Moody heights that you never get to see much

That you'd normally have to pay for

# A foggy day in London town. #

Don't spend your hard earned rent-exhausted salary

# Had me blue, had me down. #

A cool refuge from the angry streets

It rustles with young energy

Art as sex and love affair Art as the moon howling back

Art as metal cages, mirrors, art as molten orange sun, saying,

# Good day, sunshine #

Pulling us in from the frost Art as slides and childhood

We demand an active, vibrant place in it

We demand that it's alive

They're showing more women

We're more than half the population, so it's about time, too

They're showing artists from all corners of the globe

We're starting to see world as fragmented by perspective

Understand that power comes from celebrating difference

Tate pushes me to think, it always calls me back

It shows me a world refracted through an infinitely

splintering eyeglass

This is a power station morphed into a power station

The tanks' vast oil vats chuck power out and up again

This place, though, in a different way, is still lighting London up.

So, you've heard from people who really love this place,

and others who think the money could have been better spent elsewhere.

And now it's over to you, because new Tate Modern

officially opens this weekend, and you can't properly understand

art through television, you have to come and see it for yourself.

So, come here, bring an open mind, and then make it up.

And now, here's Mercury Music Prize winner Benjamin Clementine with his

appropriately titled track London to play us out.

-Good night.

-Good night.

# History will be made today

# It's written boldly on his face

# So clear you could hardly miss it

# You could hardly miss it

# For transcending the barriers of

# Yesterday was and is the dream

# On a road where Cleopatra comes and goes

# Like fishes caught in ponds then thrown back for fun

# Mmm-mmmmmm

# She said, look at you, look at you

# Just pick a fleet

# Your cup is full, your cup is full

# What have you not yet achieved?

# And it's obvious that you are trying

# It's dubious stop or you'll die here

# You're pretending but no-one is buying

# London, London, London is calling you

# What are you waiting for?

# What are you searching for?

# London is calling you

# Why are you in denial of the truth?

# I might, I might I might be boring you, he said

# Although it's not clear as the morning dew

# When my preferred ways are not happening

# I won't underestimate who

# I am capable of becoming. #

APPLAUSE