industrial womb, snow pee, and trippy videos: tate modern adventures

Today I met my friend Unicorn at the Tate Modern in some extraordinary January sunshine. Yes it was chilly, but being along the Thames on a beautiful day was really revitalizing.

We entered the Tate in Turbine Hall, a cavernous space with an intense installation of an “industrial womb.” A huge winch with wet ropes dripped brown water onto a base below.

From there we went up to some smaller galleries which included a room lined with a long piece of blue painter’s tape and some hanging mirrors with a placard asking “is this art?” My answer was no. We heard music pumping from a gallery in the far corner and followed it to find a huge room with a large curtain creating a backdrop to a rug covered with cozy cushions and a sign inviting us to take off our shoes and get comfortable.

So we took off our shoes, grabbed some cushions, and sat back to watch the trippy video playing on the enormous angled screen. The murky narrative focused on a woman wandering through nature and playing with a pig. There was a great lo-fi soundtrack and I honestly could easily imagine going back to spend an hour or two just zoning out in there.

On our way out of that area we walked past a Marcel Duchamp piece, “Fountain,” which is famously just a urinal signed with “R. Mutt.” I’d be tempted to not call it art but the fact that I vividly remember seeing it at SF MOMA in 2017 means it must have made an impression on me, and in fact I easily pulled up a photo of it with an old friend that I took that day.

We wandered through some other galleries all with intense themes, many focusing on gender and feminism and the human body. So much more nudity and bodily functions than I’m used to seeing in American museums, let alone with lots of school groups casually strolling through. The funniest was one that involved people peeing into trays of snow and then making plaster molds of the shapes they left. I was really glad that some guys wandered by giggling at it too.

It was a bonus that as we strolled through galleries we’d occasionally pass huge windows letting in streams of sunlight. We headed up to the top floor espresso bar just for the view ten stories up. The balcony was closed but I managed some shots of the golden skyline.

I warned Unicorn that I get bored after about an hour of slow-walking through museums, and fortunately our hunger was further motivation to head out. He recommended a pub nearby that had great river views and I had a steak and ale pie along with the same Jubel peach beer I’ve been getting everywhere, which he loves as well. We walked across the Millennium Bridge and paused for a photo which Ben later pointed out was perfect for turning the Shard into Unicorn’s literal horn. Really resent that I didn’t think of it myself!

It was a quick trip by tube back home, then the boys came home from school and Bill whipped up a good dinner. I spent some time organizing our ever-growing tea collection, James and I indulged in a shared molten chocolate mini-cake from M&S, and then tv time with tea. We’ve bonded over chanting “show your face!” whenever they clearly have a double doing some absurd stunt.

And, unrelated, we cracked up at a hotel review we were reading where, instead of saying “unbeatable,” the person accidentally wrote “unbearable location” about one of the best-situated hotels in Paris. LOL. Anyway, new Severance episode drops tomorrow!