The Give & Take

2016
Perfomance


Images: © Tim Etchells

The Give & Take was created for a residency Etchells held at Tate Modern, London, for the opening of Tate Exchange in October 2016. It was a programme of separate but overlapping events that ran from Thursday 29 September until Sunday October 2nd.

The Give & Take explores the idea of exchange in different spheres of life, work and society; the complex processes by which we teach and learn from each other, the systems we are caught in that both frustrate and make possible our connection. The work itself is constructed as an exchange – a framework of events that’s built to encourage conversations, meetings, arguments, encounters between members of the public, artists and thinkers.

The work has four main elements:

The Give & Take Talks is a series of events in which a great list of speakers make presentations and dialogues each day, all focused on some approach to or experience of ‘exchange’ – be that in the context of economic systems, intercultural exchange, exchange between humans and animals, exchange between family members, friendship, exchange with landscape…

Three Tables is a long interactive performance in which three performers exchange stories and have other interactions with the public on topics ranging from work and money, love, friendship and ephemeral things.

Ten Purposes is a set of instructions distributed on cards for the public to pick up and activate in Tate, private and not-so-private performances which respond to the collection.

Further Provocations is an ongoing performance, in which a series of texts are endlessly painted, painted out and then repainted on the longest wall of the gallery.


 

You can see the detailed line-up of the Tate iteration The Give & Take in the Notebook on this site.

 

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