International Festival at Tate Liverpool

Marking the end of Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture, Tate Liverpool is presenting an innovative contemporary art exhibition, The Fifth Floor: Ideas Taking Space. The Fifth Floor does not physically exist within Tate Liverpool’s four-storey building, but invites the visitor to reconsider the museum as a space for imagination.

Swedish Architect Tor Lindstrand and choreographer Mårten Spångberg created a modular and flexible 'film-set' installation that can be modified and reconfigured to host the myriad of performances and activities to be held throughout the exhibition. Together they run International Festival, a project exploring the intersections of architecture and performance. The initiative examines the role of the individual spectator in the creative process.

Dazed Digital: What is the background for the International Festival exhibition at Tate Liverpool?
Tor Lindstrand: Well, the curator Peter Gorschlueter contacted us and invited us to participate in their exhibition The Fifth Floor: Ideas Taking Space. He commissioned us to design a social space for all of activities that will take place there during the exhibition. So we needed to create a space that could cater to numerous different activities, as well as architecture that could be transformed by local community groups and artist initiatives.

DD: So how did you go about designing a flexible, multi-purpose space?
TL: We have been involved in producing a film in Vienna earlier and we made some film set walls, basically a simple chipboard and some construction elements to keep them standing. They are versatile and can be rearranged in all sorts of ways. They have two sides: one that is about fiction and one that is about function. For this show, we put together some building blocks. Set walls, chairs, tables and a mirror foil floor made out of juice carton material.

DD: Is the exhibition something that museum spectators can rearrange themselves?
TL: The idea is that this building blocks can be arranged, painted and transformed by the users of the space.

DD: Can you tell us more about the events that will be happening there over the next few months?
TL: There are all sorts of activities going on during the exhibition: different groups and constallations are coming in to do everything from public debates, a santa swop shop, film showings, workshops, concerts and performances. There will be some kind of t-shirt grotto. I imagine it being like the Playboy Mansion grotto but with fewer blond girls.

DD: What are you doing with the t-shirts?
TL: We used clothing to create structures, using second-hand t-shirts from Oxfam as building blocks. Then we are doing silk screen prints on them.

DD: Doesn't it get kind of messy?
TL: Yes, it gets really, really messy, but that's the whole point. To mess things up.

DD: How is this an example of a typical International Festival project, exploring the intersection of architecture and choreography?
TL: Our interest with this show was to create something that would change the museum from a space for representation to a space for production.

DD: Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by a "space for representation" and a "space for production"?
TL: Museums are normally spaces where we look at static and sort of dead objects. By changing this into something that looks rather like a messed up, glittery workshop and providing tools to rearrange and transform it, our piece is never finished, never static and animated by visitors, invited artists and the staff of the museum.
 
DD: What kind of response have you had so far from museum visitors during the first few days of the exhibition?
TL: On the opening night, we had a baby disco with loads of toddlers jumping up and down for three hours. It looked like a children's TV show on acid. They were crying when their parents made them leave. You might say we are investing in future audiences.

The Fifth Floor: Ideas Taking Space at Tate Liverpool 16th December 2008  –  1st February 2009