Tacita Dean's addition to the Turbine Hall is only 11 minutes long, but it acts as a window into an almost forgotten world, literally and creatively.
Catalogues accompanying installations are usually the fare of ultra-enthusiasts and journalists in need of background knowledge, so the difference in the book accompanying Dean's work – which counts Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Neil Young and Keanu Reeves among dozens of contributors to a debate on analogue – speaks volumes.
Taking the appearance of a filmstrip, shot on a cinemascope lens turned on its side and projected from the back of the building, the work itself is Dean's own love letter to "film in its purest form".
She wants to highlight the extinction of film production outlets, not out of nostalgia or whimsy – although you could make a very compelling case for both by watching this – but because it has always been her medium, and its loss feels as urgently painful to her as a dearth of materials or studio space would seem to a painter.
Bright white waterfalls snap into dark blue mushrooms in Film. In its shadowy grey moments, viewers dwarfed below it look like caricatures from age-old picturehouses.
Sometimes it lights up the whole place, dripping blocks of rich colour across the vast screen, as if we're peering through stained glass or have been consumed by a kaleidoscope.
Pictures fade, frames and prints are over-exposed, and a pair of small eyeballs blink at the top of the screen, perhaps owned by a child who has stumbled into the projection room and is considering pawing at the lens.
It articulates a sense of wonder which remains vital and uniquely authentic, and reminds us of the enchantment inside screen archives, just as Capturing Colour did at Brighton Museum at the start of the year.
Dean is no more opposed to the deployment of digital than vinyl junkies are to the sheen of MP3s. But the implicitly mournful underlying message is that the techniques capable of such organic, crackling beauty are on the precipice of being entirely lost.
And the Turbine Hall, positioned as a setting for the spectacular at the entrance to an art cathedral of the contemporary, suddenly becomes quaint and old-fashioned and magical.
- Open 10am-6pm (10pm Friday and Saturday, 6pm December 31, closed December 24-26). Admission free.
