A little context… when I arrived at the Tate Modern for the preview screening of the next six weeks’ worth of Tateshots – a series of podcasts over 150 episodes old – I had been nursing a virus that left me intellectually capable of processing nothing more cerebral than a music video or – at a push – Dora the Explorer. In short, not in the right state of mind to watch David Byrne perform a staccato dad-dance with a gang of cherubic stage-school kids. Unfortunately, that’s what I got.
Not that the current Tateshots series is exactly predictable – the six artists, of varying renown and pretension, are a considerately chosen bunch, all of whom agonise over whether they are an ‘artist’ or a ‘performer’ and talk about the varying degrees of overlap between their art and their music. Lynda Lunch kicks, stabs, shouts and screams her way through her five minutes, touching briefly on prostitute-killing and her ex (separately), all in front of an idyllic looking Butlins, while Cosey Fanni Tutti talks candidly about posing nude for the sake of a good collage.
Jeffrey Lewis squints into the camera in a hole-y cardigan and yaps about his impressive comic books, spliced (as all of the ‘shots’ are) with live footage, consisting him projecting his art onto a speaker and serenading it. Byrne jigs about for a bit in front of a vastly more interesting-looking piano, augmented with the previously mentioned mind-bending live performance.
Although Byrne’s participation is clearly a coup, his insight is the most mundane – the star turns are instead saved for The Fall’s Mark E Smith and Billy Childish. Smith is engaging and intelligent, albeit with the delivery of a beaming, toothless tramp, triumphing with an anecdote involving choreographer Michael Clark, Damien Hirst and a wanton piece of steel, casually claiming to be the influence behind the YBA ringleader’s best ideas along the way. An extremely moustachioed Billy Childish steals the series, playfully interviewing himself at his Mum’s house, surrounded by Munch-inspired oil paintings and intersected with footage of either tub-thumping pub-gig footage or him smiling wryly around his ‘tash.
The series as a whole is a fascinating little insight into the vast range of influences and overlaps between art and music, evident in an eclectic bunch of musicians’ work – and thankfully, if you fancy whiling away five minutes on any of these shorts, there’s no need to drag your bemused self down to the plush Tate auditorium: they’ll be online at tate.org.uk/tateshots or via iTunes from now.
Words by Joel Golby
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