Hyundai Commission: Phillip Parreno

Since its official opening in 2000, the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London has commissioned numerous internationally renowned artists to create works for its space. From the inaugural exhibition by Louise Bourgeois, to Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, and Anish Kapoor, each exhibition embodies the artists’ reinterpretation of the space.

In 2017, Philippe Parreno transformed the Turbine Hall with the exhibition Anywhen, creating an immersive experience that responds to the architectural space and challenges the audience’s perception of time and space. The exhibition revolves around six key themes—Time, Bioreactor, Space, Sound, Cinema, and Floating Fish—engaging in a ripple of interactions. The Bioreactor is placed in a room adjacent to the Turbine Hall. A weather station on the museum’s roof transmits outdoor data such as wind speed, temperature, and light to the Bioreactor. Each variation in the data affects the fermentation of the yeast inside the Bioreactor, and a computer program uses these changes in fermentation to control activities occurring in the exhibition space. These include the rhythm of the Marquee lights, images projected on screens, sounds reverberating through the space, and the floating fish suspended in the air.

As the title Anywhen suggests, Parreno’s work is related to time. He seeks to create an exhibition with a life of its own, where visitors can experience the blurred boundaries between time and space. The Turbine Hall resonates with the sounds of the city, human voices, birds, and even fish that have become extinct in the Thames are brought back to the hall. The complex interplay of time and space is closely connected to the entire city, and each moment that occurs differs from the one before. The exhibition has no fixed or “correct” route of experience, aiming to challenge the audience’s preconceived notions of reality.