WHEEEEEEEE!
Oct. 31st, 2006 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeOn Friday morning I walked along the South bank to the Tate Modern. I accidentally pushed into the ticket queue. I had been waiting at the front, and didn't realise that if you wanted to get tickets for the Carsten Höller slides then you were supposed to join a massive queue round the side. All I saw when I got down the stairs was a rush of people going to queue, so I joined in, and got a few glares I didn't understand until about ten minutes later. By that time, having weathered the distaste radiating around me, I poked around my conscience a bit and decided that I didn't feel guilty enough to leave and go to the back. As a kind of penance I only got one ticket though, which seemed a compromise that I could just about live with.
My ticket was for a few hours later, and I took advantage of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lsugaralmond's kind loan of a Tate card to have breakfast in the members' cafe. It was lovely sitting on the terrace overlooking the Thames. The view was mostly of the tops of buildings and a lot of cranes, but a View nonetheless, and one that made me feel a bit special. I also went and looked round the Cubism exhibit, which had a room of Guerilla Girls posters. I like the Guerilla Girls' work, so I was pleased, but then wondered what the Tate's record was on exhibiting women and black artists. Galleries should only be allowed to show GG stuff if they put up a sign of their own displaying the statistics for the past year, and explaining exactly what their commitment to equality entails. Or are we now so stupidly post-feminist that we can stand around smugly saying "ooh wasn't it terrible" right next to a poster saying "things are even worse in Europe" without questioning if they've got any better?
Eventually I got to go on the slide. You have to wedge your feet into a sort of sack thing, and I had trouble getting into that while clinging to the side so that I wouldn't set off too soon and land on a poor child at the bottom. There was a lot of shrieking, and while there were hats and elbow pads that you could use, no-one else around me was and I didn't feel brave enough to ask for them. As it turned out I didn't need them. I whooshed down giggling the entire way, and felt that I managed the potentially clumsy ending rather gracefully. I wished that I hadn't made a stupid moral bargain, and had tickets for the other slides as well. I had seen a few of the "but is it art" whining in various papers, and I have to say that it never occured to me to think about it at the time. My only thought was "wheeee!" and that's pretty much what it is now I come to reflect more maturely.
I just had time to investigate the giftshop for stocking presents before heading to Euston. I couldn't find any, but bought myself some Guerilla Girls rubbers that say "erase discrimination" as I am not so unhypocritical not to like a nicely commercialised bit of feminist tat to pretend like I'm doing something that matters. I have paired it with my "women rulers in history" ruler, and now I have to find something to rule for my work. A small country will do. The rubber will come in useful when I get books out of the library that are covered in pencil underlinings, which makes me furious. Mostly because it impedes my own reading, but also I can get sanctimonious because it causes difficulty in the machines that convert the text for visually impaired people.
Anyway, I walked along to the bookstall under hungerford bridge, nothing there, probably just as well as Lizzie had given me some from her slush pile. There were signs for a Gorillaz pop-up shop along the bridge to Embankment, but I didn't go. On the train home I was working on some discourse reading at a table. I was joined by another student who matched my book, and then pulled out another, so that she looked more dilligent than me! Also, she was a medical student, which is rather good. Then I noticed that not only had she not yet got to grown-up medicine and was only on paediatrics, but it was concise paediatrics at that. Hah! Then there was another woman but she did business studies and I like to think we both turned up our noses at that. Actually med student was asleep until Preston, where she said "does this train go to Preston" and I said "this is Preston" and then she did a very television style thing of shrieking and grabbing things and diving off the train.
My ticket was for a few hours later, and I took advantage of
lsugaralmond's kind loan of a Tate card to have breakfast in the members' cafe. It was lovely sitting on the terrace overlooking the Thames. The view was mostly of the tops of buildings and a lot of cranes, but a View nonetheless, and one that made me feel a bit special. I also went and looked round the Cubism exhibit, which had a room of Guerilla Girls posters. I like the Guerilla Girls' work, so I was pleased, but then wondered what the Tate's record was on exhibiting women and black artists. Galleries should only be allowed to show GG stuff if they put up a sign of their own displaying the statistics for the past year, and explaining exactly what their commitment to equality entails. Or are we now so stupidly post-feminist that we can stand around smugly saying "ooh wasn't it terrible" right next to a poster saying "things are even worse in Europe" without questioning if they've got any better?Eventually I got to go on the slide. You have to wedge your feet into a sort of sack thing, and I had trouble getting into that while clinging to the side so that I wouldn't set off too soon and land on a poor child at the bottom. There was a lot of shrieking, and while there were hats and elbow pads that you could use, no-one else around me was and I didn't feel brave enough to ask for them. As it turned out I didn't need them. I whooshed down giggling the entire way, and felt that I managed the potentially clumsy ending rather gracefully. I wished that I hadn't made a stupid moral bargain, and had tickets for the other slides as well. I had seen a few of the "but is it art" whining in various papers, and I have to say that it never occured to me to think about it at the time. My only thought was "wheeee!" and that's pretty much what it is now I come to reflect more maturely.
I just had time to investigate the giftshop for stocking presents before heading to Euston. I couldn't find any, but bought myself some Guerilla Girls rubbers that say "erase discrimination" as I am not so unhypocritical not to like a nicely commercialised bit of feminist tat to pretend like I'm doing something that matters. I have paired it with my "women rulers in history" ruler, and now I have to find something to rule for my work. A small country will do. The rubber will come in useful when I get books out of the library that are covered in pencil underlinings, which makes me furious. Mostly because it impedes my own reading, but also I can get sanctimonious because it causes difficulty in the machines that convert the text for visually impaired people.
Anyway, I walked along to the bookstall under hungerford bridge, nothing there, probably just as well as Lizzie had given me some from her slush pile. There were signs for a Gorillaz pop-up shop along the bridge to Embankment, but I didn't go. On the train home I was working on some discourse reading at a table. I was joined by another student who matched my book, and then pulled out another, so that she looked more dilligent than me! Also, she was a medical student, which is rather good. Then I noticed that not only had she not yet got to grown-up medicine and was only on paediatrics, but it was concise paediatrics at that. Hah! Then there was another woman but she did business studies and I like to think we both turned up our noses at that. Actually med student was asleep until Preston, where she said "does this train go to Preston" and I said "this is Preston" and then she did a very television style thing of shrieking and grabbing things and diving off the train.
