On Friday night I dropped into Tate Modern to have a look at Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, the new installation in the turbine hall. It's a crack in the floor, beginning at one end as a hairline fracture, and opening out into a deep fissure in the middle of the hall.
A Shibboleth is a word or cultural device that acts as a test of membership of a society (from Judges 12:1-6). The following quotes are from the exhibition leaflet;
‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.
In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.
Perhaps Shibboleth will help us think about how racial divisions run through British society, where many people are blinded by the belief that we've grown beyond racism. Or maybe we'll just play around with the crack, and never look to closely at what it signifies.
Salcedo has remained tight-lipped about how the crack was made, but it will leave a permanent scar on the building when it's filled in.
While I was there, the hall became remarkably full for an unusual piece of modern art. Then the crowd pulled out their ipods and headphones, and began dancing wildly. Someone in the middle of the hall coordinated the occasional cheer, but otherwise everyone danced to their own music. Other than the fast-rising smell of sweat, it was all harmless and friendly. It's coordinated from a website, www.mobile-clubbing.com.
