Hayward Gallery: MOVE choreographing you + Essay: The Spectacle

The spectacle
Week 4

The spectacle between viewers

“The spectacle is not a collection of images rather it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.” Guy Debord.
It is a contribution of the spectator to the artwork, their reciprocal relationship reveals the spectacle. To bring the spectators together, entertainment plays an important role, we want to amuse ourselves and that could be the motive to go somewhere were we can find the spectacle (with others).

Ten Thousand Waves is a film by Isaac Julien, showing until the 8th of January in the Hayward Gallery. Nine screens are hung from the ceiling of a room, on all of them a busy traffic intersection is projected and a voice over is telling a poem in a very calm way. Subsequently, the projection changes into a beautiful Chinese woman sitting in a full tram, she isn't shown on every screen. You have to walk around the room to follow her projection which makes its way across all nine screens, showing her from different perspectives. The whole film consists of three separate story lines, projected this way. Due to the way this film is exhibited, it evokes a different response from the viewer to that of a film shown in a cinema as you have to participate by moving around the room. You can however choose to sit down and watch the film from just one viewpoint. In this example I see the importance of the viewer complimenting to the spectacle of the film courtesy of the non-linear way in which it can be absorbed.

Some children were playing in this room, standing behind the screen gesturing with the silhouette of their fingers in the nose of the pretty Chinese lady. Everyone in the room could see this happen, altering the relationship between the film and the viewers and between the viewers themselves. They changed the spectacle by entertaining themselves and their peers. Due to the children’s participation at this particular exhibit, the attention of the audience was shifted from the movie toward the children, subsequently changing the focus of the spectacle as a result. Most of the people in the room were there to see the film (the spectacle of cinema) and didn’t expect to be confronted with the spectacle of the children. After a while the children moved on leaving only adults in the room. As a result the individual strangers became connected by what was shown on the screens. At the same time trying to find his/her place in the exhibit respectively.

In the end it was this connection that further illustrated Guy Debord's theory that the spectacle relies on both the image and the relationship between the people mediated by images.


Placing playground attributes in the context of a gallery so we become more consciouss about how we use our body/play. The attributes are made by the artist who add their artistic imagination to it and make it an artpiece. I'm mainly talking about William Forsythe. Because isn't this something we also do playfully at PE?

The current exhibition of the Hayward gallery, 13 October - 9 January, asks for participation of the visitor.
"The exhibition explores the historical and current relationship between visual arts and dance by presenting seminal works and new commissions by leading artists from the last 50 years".
When I visited the gallery I enjoyed the open atmosphere in the gallery, which is different from most gallery's, this openness also caused that I didn't know where to start. A lot of children were running around using/participating with the artworks and it took me some time to find my place in this setting.

Afterwards I noticed that I didn't pay much attention to the big installations which were all placed quite close to eachother in the centre of the gallery space. If I was to change anything about the arrangement of the artworks it would be there, it looks too much like a playground and the line between amusementspark and art exhibtion gets very thin.