On 13 October, Tarek Atoui's Hold opened in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. An Uzbek karnay, a copper ceremonial trumpet, hangs above the ramp. Atoui worked with it a year ago at the Bukhara Biennial. Two horns beside it were 3D-printed with the London studio Arthur Mamou-Mani, from sugar resin with bamboo dust.
The fabrics for the piece came from Satoshi Kondo, designer of Issey Miyake's women's line. They are made of Japanese washi paper and cotton. Atoui coated them with charcoal paint that carries a weak current to a synthesizer. The fabric sways with the wind and the humidity in the hall, and the synthesizer answers with bass.
At the far end of the hall, among bamboo and shengs, Chinese mouth organs, hang drums, gongs, stones and twenty-metre cloths. A motor controlled by a computer pushes wind through the pipes. Microphones are hidden inside: they record the sound of the instruments and the hum of the Turbine Hall itself, and a custom program replays it in layers. Stones that look like lithophones lie below, and you can sit or lie on them and look up.
Atoui doesn't think of the hall as a cathedral, since it doesn't have that kind of reverberation. To him it recalls a silo, a large industrial space, a "sound vessel". The work grew out of his memories of places where people gather: vine-covered awnings, closed courtyards.
This is Hyundai's eleventh commission for the Turbine Hall and the first in the new term of the partnership between Hyundai Motor and Tate, extended to 2036. Hold will sound until 11 April 2027.
