Philippe Parreno’s work entitled Anywhen transformed Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall into an experience that plays with time and space, guiding the public through constantly changing stages of light, sound and moving elements. Anywhen was the first commission at Tate after the opening of the Blavatnick Building and it responded to the Turbine Hall’s new position at the center of the museum, an open space connected to the city itself and free for the public to enter from many different levels and directions. As if on a walk through an urban park, visitors to Hyundai Commission: Philippe Parreno: Anywhen encountered events, movements and images that appeared and disappeared over time.

Conceived in collaboration with other visual artists and practitioners, Anywhen was presented as an instrument to be played; a grid of speakers was periodically lowered from the ceiling; a moving light cast a shadow throughout the hall; a large central ‘marquee’ hung suspended over the Turbine Hall bridge. Always growing and metamorphosing, the  exhibition was also accompanied by a changing soundscape that broadcast from several sources, blurring the sense of inside and outside, public and private, natural and technological. Vertical and horizontal acoustic panels, a screen, a grid of speakers and a projector came together in different configurations, and from time to time showed a film featuring a stage ventriloquist and underwater creatures.

Hyundai Commission: Philippe Parreno: Anywhen was curated by Andrea Lissoni, Senior Curator, International Art (Film), Tate Modern with Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.