Tate Modern feels Tony Oursler's influence

Associated media

'Tony Oursler: The Influence Machine'

15–16 and 18–19 February 2013, 6 p.m.–10 p.m.

Tate Modern, River landscape

Admission free

Ghostly presences are set to haunt the winter landscape around Tate Modern in an other-worldly installation by American artist Tony Oursler (b.1957). This large-scale multimedia séance, entitled The Influence Machine, will take place from 18.00 to 22.00 on 15, 16, 18 and 19 February. Oursler, who directed the video to David Bowie’s new single ‘Where Are We Now?’, is renowned for his imaginative use of projection and performance to create immersive environments, and this example is among several works by major video and film artists donated to Tate from the Artangel Collection in 2011.

Playing on both the technological and supernatural meanings of the word ‘medium’, The Influence Machine is conceived as a kind of ‘psycho-landscape’ in the spirit of late 18th-century phantasmagorias. It examines the machines that have been created as tools of communication, from the radio to the telephone, the television and now the Internet, and explores this history of disembodied voices and fleeting images.

The work consists of monologues performed by several ethereal figures which will be projected onto trees, walls and clouds of smoke around Tate Modern’s riverside landscape. Key names from media history are referenced, such as the television pioneer John Logie Baird and Étienne Gaspard Robert, the founder of the first movie theatre in a Paris crypt in 1763. The haunting soundtrack, played on a glass harmonica, was composed by musician and expanded cinema pioneer Tony Conrad. These elements combine to create a fractured multimedia world of spectres, sounds and light.

On Saturday 16 February, Tate Modern will also present a one-off screening of Oursler’s single-channel videos in the Starr Auditorium.

For public information: www.tate.org.uk or 020 7887 8888

Presented in collaboration with Artangel