If you need green ink for that grant application form, if you want to contract undergraduate teaching to Mumbai, if your department requires morris dancers-in-residence, or if your cat needs welding, please contact the Institute of Bad Ideas
Dear Dr Locke,
Institute of Bad Ideas
Thanks for your think-tank's latest suggestion as to how Tate Modern might utilise its celebrated Turbine Hall. Imagine our delight at receiving yet another four-volume "thinktionary" kit on this matter with yet another CD-Rom that doesn't work. This time you have excelled yourself with the concept of installing a turbine in the Turbine Hall. You say: "The space within the Turbine Hall is ideally suited for a turbine." You go on to observe that it would reduce our electricity bills and make a statement about carbon emissions. Something in this reminds me of your last idea - using the cavernous 3,300 square metre Turbine Hall for nano-art viewed through microscopes. In May, you proposed filling the Turbine Hall with bricks - "you like bricks, don't you?" you said. In March, you suggested we exhibit the flayed body of Rolf Harris, "mounted on a cross of pure pomposity". And, of course, you phoned a fortnight ago to implore us to instal bronze statues of Victorian generals on stone plinths. Have you ever considered a job with the Arts Council?
Jemima Githam
Tate Modern, London