Holy shit. Some one cracked Tate Modern & 2007 Sterling Prize

Artist Doris Salcedo just cracked Tate Modern's Turbine Hall's concrete floor, No, really, Shut Up!

This installation by the Colombian artist is called 'Shibboleth' - a fissure that starts as a hairline crack at the top of the ramp near the west entrance of the hall and zigzags 167 metres down to the far end, gradually widening and deepening as it runs, creating smaller and more superficial cracks along the way.

Shibboleth - which comes from the bible, refers to a word that only those your own tribe could pronounce - to proof that you belong. A shibboleth is a test of authenticity, a means to separate friend from foe. The artist used this as the metaphor for racism. Salcedo has said that the crack and the wire mesh refer to the evil of racism, the divide between the black and white halves of humanity that, in time, only gets deeper and wider and will, at the end, bring the whole building down.



Said Salcedo: "It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred. It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe. For example, the space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space."

The museum and artist are choosing to let the process of its creation remain a mystery, yet the exhibit will be closed next year when the crack will be filled in: "There is a crack, there is a line, and eventually there will be a scar and that scar will remain. It will remain as a memory of the work and also as a memorial to the issues Doris touches on."

Holy shit, I could only imagine what it's like to really be there and look at it. I suppose it must be visually stunning.

'Shibboleth' will be on display until 6th April 2008. I need to start saving up.

* * * * * * * * *

2007 Sterling Prize Winner



David Chipperfield won 2007's Sterling Prize for his design for Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, Germany

The official RIBA citation of this award-winning design.

Museum of Modern Literature
Marbach am Neckar, Germany

Architect: David Chipperfield Architects
Client: Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
Site supervision: Wenzel + Wenzel
Project management: Drees + Sommer
Structural engineer: Ingenieurgruppe Bauen
Services engineer: Jaeger, Mornhinweg + Partner
Ingenieurgesellschaft / Ingenieurbüro Burrer +
Deuring
Contract Value: 11.8m euro
Date of completion: June 2006
Gross internal area: 3,800 sq m

Following re-unification, texts of various well-known German authors which had previously been dispersed to east and west have now been brought together in this new museum. In a suitably commemorative manner the building forms a small Acropolis attached to the National Schiller Museum on a ridge overlooking the valley of the River Neckar. The entrance sequence is brilliant. The visitor crosses an open terrace overlooking the valley, then negotiates a series of shallow steps to enter the generous portal formed in the colonnade, then enters through giant hardwood doors. A staircase descends to the collections with their required diminishing lighting levels. It is at this moment of descent that the building shows its pedigree – a sense of a progression to somewhere beyond, combined with a rich but selective palette of materials and illuminated with subdued top lighting. The route concludes in the permanent collection. Here glass cases containing original manuscripts form a magical flickering landscape. There is a particular theatricality about this space, as though the reflections, refractions and multiple shadows from the small intense lights collectively represent the soul of the German imagination.

There are many things to praise about this building – the architect’s control and discrimination in the choice of materials has by now become a signature but above all it is in the handling of the ‘difficult whole’ that the building excels. The external pre-cast concrete arcading (or is it a screen or even a cage?) forming the entrance pavilion is also applied to the plinth on the east side. This unexpectedly produces a monumental elevation cut into the hillside, which simultaneously democratises the acropolis giving equal status to pavilion and plinth. The same measure and interval of the vertical structure is then to be found forming the soffit to the beams to the galleries inside…. Truly a tour de force.

Since the end of the war Germany has been sensitive to matters concerning the neo-classical in architecture. Had it been submitted a decade or two earlier it would surely have been eliminated for its formal manner. It is encouraging that with time, more even-handed attitudes have prevailed.