From : http://www.thewomensroomblog.com/2013/02/02/suzanne-lacys-silver-action-project-at-tate-modern/
Bridie Moore:
Silver Action
The Tanks, Tate Modern, 3/2/13
As I travelled on the tube from Kings Cross to St Paul’s to
see Suzanne Lacy’s piece Silver Action
at newly opened The Tanks at Tate Modern I was naturally thinking about the
representation and visibility of older women in our culture. I decided to do a quick scan of the poster
images on my journey. Unsurprisingly
these were overwhelmingly of youth: sexy, energetic or sardonically youthful
figures looked out appealingly from adverts for Singin’ in the Rain, The
Bodyguard and the film I’ll Give it a
Year, even adverts for hair loss clinics were peopled by luxuriantly
coiffed thirty-somethings. Middle aged Boris Johnson and Jeremy Clarkson were
the only images of people aged past youth and there were no middle aged or
older women represented anywhere.
It was an unusual sight therefore on entering The Tanks to
see about a hundred women over the age of 60 (although sadly only a few were
women of colour) who had come together to discuss their own past involvement in
political activism and their potential contribution to future action. The large circular space had three main
points of focus. In one area were 24
tables at most of which sat 4 women in discussion. On the yellow tablecloths were cards which
asked two questions, one about what propelled the women to activism and the
other asked what was different with age, what were the challenges of being
older and what potential contributions could they make. There was a hum of conversation on this side
of the space. Five computer screens were
projected on the curving wall opposite, with constantly scrolling, changing
text, generated by assistants at laptops who were taking down, verbatim,
stories being told to them by women coming and going, one by one. The third point of focus was a long white,
highly lit table, at which ten women were discussing topics that seemed related
to the cards on the yellow tables opposite.
This act of coming together could be seen as both ‘silver
action’ in itself and a celebration and honouring of action that these now (not
exclusively) silver haired women had undertaken as younger people. I was engaged by the stories projected on the
walls, about women’s propulsion into action: women from varied backgrounds told
stories of bigotry in their communities – a white girl being arrested at a
Guildford dance hall for the fracas caused when she danced with a young black
man; discrimination in education – women, on completing their degrees, refused
an actual degree qualification; and stories of those who just saw a need to
involve the excluded in their communities and so took action.
These stories were accessed easily by reading the projected
text, however the live conversation was very difficult to hear and we were
forbidden to interact with the seated women.
This meant the audience were excluded from much of the conversation
either as listeners or as participants.
At the long white table we were able, with some effort, to hear the
discussion which covered areas such as the prohibition on exploring elder
sexuality and also the point in the 1990s where ‘post-feminism’ arrived in the
universities and pressures from supervisors closed down any radical research or
writing. However on the yellow tables
discussion was mostly inaudible. At the
beginning of the piece one visiting woman pulled up a seat at one of the yellow
tables, enthusiastic not only to hear but also to participate, she was told
this wasn’t permitted due to ‘consent issues’.
Frustratingly, neither were we allowed to enter the table area to hear
the conversations taking place in the centre of this space. I sensed that the meaning of this piece was
not being played out here but elsewhere or in another time, either in the
future film that was being constructed as a (marketing) document of the event
or in cyberspace: younger assistants at each table were tweeting, presumably
with comments emerging from the table discussions. This, oddly, made them look like surly
youngsters, texting whilst their elders engaged in conversation they weren’t
interested in. One would have had to be
on twitter in that moment and to view the film in the future to feel completely
involved. This almost makes redundant
the act of travelling to and from Leeds to engage with the Silver Action piece as it happened on the day.
The question of action
is central to the problems with this piece.
This coming together of such politically engaged women can be considered
an action in itself, honouring the activism of those who were so instrumental
in challenging the way our culture functioned to constrain individual
potential. This was an act of
reminiscence, one that is problematic in isolation, in that it honours the
older person only as a repository of memory.
These women did have passionate conversations with each other and who
knows what future action these might inspire, however in restricting the
audience’s engagement and especially any potential conversation with the women,
the piece restricted potential action on
the day. This situation is indicative
of our early 21st century health & safety and consent-obsessed
culture, which here seemed responsible for closing down any possibility o
f the
kind of risk-taking that facilitated the way these women forced change in our
society in the first place. Are we looking back nostalgically to the time when
we could take such action? It is typical of the sort of regulated event that is
exemplified now in licensed protest marches and our highly regulated education
system, one that disallows the experimental and the risky. The mostly female audience were disgruntled
but did not take any sort of action; we should have staged a sit in or forced
our way to the tables, but we are now socialised into an acquiescent mode of behaviour
and the codes that restrict us are far subtler than perhaps they once
were. This is especially true in one of
our foremost cultural institutions Tate Modern.
In the end Silver Action
reinforced the stereotype of the compliant, ineffective and invisible older
woman. It was a risk free and curiously hidden piece – the more public Turbine
Hall although empty was not used for a piece which claimed to honour the
visibility of older women – and more than honouring action this piece closed it
down.
This work (quilt, film and audio documentation) is also on
display at Tate Modern in the Transformations Gallery.
