It was with some trepidation that I returned to Tate Britain. I've just got over the Turner Prize 2008 experience and I had yet to take the risk of seeing the works of Rothko exhibited side by side with those of Turner. And so here we are at Altermodern. The ticket salesman was in an incredibly mardy mood. His 'untitled work' looked similar to one he should study called 'P45'. Highly recommended. Another bad first step. The second bad step is into the first expansive hall. It's pouring cats and dogs outside and it must have got into the lighting circuit, it looked like emergency lights only, so dim. Try reading the exhibition guide, on the other hand don't, you'll get eye strain. Remind me to bring my miner's helmet lamp next time. Of course you have already walked past at least two pieces of work before the ticket desk, clever isn't it to put work in the stair well where you need to look at the steps and the hand rail.

Well thanks Ruth Ewan for leaving the lights on your Squeezebox Jukebox even if there was no performance today. At least I could decide what to read and what to ignore in the guide. But the display of silence was exquisite. There was a jukebox in a café in Bath way back in 1964 but I forget what music was popular, I couldn't afford the coffee, the music or the time. Only when I heard Tuomas play an accordion at Rita's fiftieth birthday party in Hassi did I really understand the joy of his music. When a farm accident rips most of your finger joints off you have to admire such musicianship on the accordion or the piano.

I had seen some of Bob (and Roberta) Smith's sign painting art before. I didn't warm to it then either. Now we have the title, all clever stuff folks, 'Off Voice Fly Tip'. When the curator is a continental wordsmith and the artist is having difficulty with basic English spelling it is tedious. I can't find any pictorial evidence of Monsieur Nicolas Bourriaud's own works of art, so I am left with his words. He seems to have retro taste in African music. Save us from the next quote: 'What is an idea? A collision between a person and a place.' Or how about:'There is too much Spectacular, very simple art. Complexity takes time. It's a lesson of slowness, a path, a personal itinerary'. remind me to strike Palais de Tokyo off any future Paris itinerary. More words: 'The point is to open space for discussion'. So far a monologue? Ear-plugs for all, it's a human right! Bourriaud's girlfriend Sinziana chirps in with "You are a cultural absolutist". Absolutely! If you say so. Whatever! I had got the impression that women's liberation wasn't so well advanced in France as in Britain and the USA, maybe I was wrong. Don't worry, the audience seem to have got it right. 'One speaker said my work was JUNK. There was a big laugh. They all declared 'altermodernism' is a Junk Space'. The popular and democratic vote declares the result conclusive. Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep - mind your backs, the skip lorry is reversing in, the art event of the decade is about to happen, Altermodern is off to Edmonton power station, nothing to recycle, just burn it and make clean electricity. Save us from importing more French nuclear electricity for the morning kettle surge. Imagine, if the French fishermen had timed their port blockade differently, we could have been saved from half of this. Bob, do your own work, don't get hijacked by Bourriaud, try giving him a brush and a pot of paint of his own.

The water leaks in the fabric of the gallery wall were more concerning. Look half way up the wall at the wet stone and right up at the top near the glazing towards the corner, more rain infiltration. Did the builders use soapstone for sandstone, or even brown sugar cubes? Is Tate and Lyle rhyming slang for pile, or style.

Across the hall and some genuine 'retro-modernism'. Spartacus Chetwynd has provided her bean bags to slouch in just as uncomfortably as the first time round, 'last century'. (What a lovely name.) How many polystyrene beads can we release into this Earth? An assortment of television screens like the ones you chuck out around the pre-Christmas sales, low definition, low production values, shaky hand-held camera work. Just like any sales items, you can't get your money back when it's not fit for purpose. When all the screens died and displayed a random assortment of green screens it was a relief from watching audio and video that weren't quite synchronised. I have to move on before I look for the infamous and expensive Tate brick sculpture for a missile for the screens. Only two pieces viewed and I am already fed up with the gloom.

David Noonan's untitled piece reminded me of theatre flats. Can I suggest the title then: 'unlit and unfinished'.

Mike Nelson seems to have, amongst the clutter, seven copies of a book with his name on the spine. I don't think I'll be running down to the library to find out what it's about. Do I want to see the clutter of another person's workroom? No. Do I want to see an over-enlarged projection of a low resolution screen of a subject blocked by the Tate's classical columns. Just like Goshka Makuca at the Whitechapel Art Gallery with the Guernica tapestry. When will they ever learn?

The next room is brightly lit, of course it would be, it's the Shop. Devious aren't they! I couldn't find any catalogues in the shop 'outside' the exhibition, maybe if I had I wouldn't have gone in. The three-year-old catalogue of the previous triennial is available at bargain basement prices, 75% off, can't even give them away. Happily the current one is including quite a lot of work equal to or superior to that on display this year. Beware. This is less and less an art gallery than an art curators' coven.
Daniel Birnbaum's and Anders Olsson's co-authored volume, translated into the English language, is on sale. Marica had read it in the original Swedish and tried to reassure me. The title; As a Weasel Sucks Eggs. An Essay on Melancholy and Cannibalism. Sternberg Press. Thanks DB, but no thanks. I've still got a kidney in the freezer from the last visit. After last year I only read art books for their pictures and you have none. Words, words, words, words and more words. Get the garlic and the wooden stakes ready; another volume by Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating. Even one page is more than enough folks and this is a whole book. John Latham's book sculpture is elsewhere in Tate Britain, who will continue his good work and saw the lot in half? The slag heaps viewed from North Queensferry were impressive, but the trauma of Aberfan puts even Latham's art project into perspective.

Shezad Dawood's canvas was quite sketchy and the cow skull, where was the rock? Don't worry, I can imagine a rock. I can imagine a cactus too. But I can't imagine quite what this has to do with alter-modern. There must be an alter-native, but not here.

Navin Rawanchaikul's little video was technically sound and a pleasant insight into life in Thailand. The letter, I didn't finish reading it . . . the huge and colourful canvas 'An Odyssey of Life' was spectacular, widescreen, better than Bollywood. Generally excellent lettering and calligraphy, one or two spelling or grammatical complexities, forgiven. Better than a call centre in Bangalore. Too much to write about, words can't do it justice. Just sit and look and enjoy. Look closer and you will see a few crunchy cockroaches, a mouse, a crown cap, that stylish fanned turban and the absurd posturing at the line of demarcation. I'll gladly look up Sialkot Junction and Gujranwala City.

Another bright room. Franz Ackerman's paint smells fresh, looks fresh but what's in the title '<<GATEWAY>>-GETAWAY'. The few moments of sound-track say 'Who are you?' 'That's a good question.' Just a two-line dialogue. (In 1968 when I did something similar with an audio loop at Konstindustriskolan Lotta criticised me!) Lots of colourful flags on the floor to tempt little children. Huge colourful works in various media. But perhaps a huge form of doodle art. A little girl says 'What are we supposed to do?' What a fantastic question! And her brother says 'This is boring mummy'. Out of the mouths of babes . . . yet two adults stride past with 'Let's get out of this place quickly'. And they had seen all the rest! Gulp. What am I in for today, Henry?

David Noonan's monochrome jute printed collage looks almost tapestry like with dancing grey figures. What happened to colour? I want to join Les Fauves! Raoul Dufy, lend me your colours.

And so to Charles Avery's various works. A huge sculpture of the head of an elephant like animal with a second head at the end of the first one's trunk. It's the wrong place, the wrong scale relationship, perhaps it would work better outdoors, or cast in something. But the related works do well, "Distance at a distance". "Triangulated Bourgeoisie studying the head of an Aleph", (That's the sculptural animal), in another drawing wolves with ostrich feet leap and catch seagulls, to eat. The image at first sets you off thinking about dinosaurs and then there are plastic bottles, a can, a hosepipe, an oil drum all in the shallows. This all builds up to appreciating a work entitled "Triangle Land". It's full of amusing ideas, something like two sides of a flat planet or moon with places with interesting names. I could live with that. There was no settlement named Curatorsville!

Olivia Plender's space has a nicely furnished desk, a small display cabinet, and some clothes and a backcloth with a symbol. The computer screen presents a context for Woodcraft, for the Kibbo Kift. The pin-board and the desk have news-cuttings with headlines; "Travel, Escape the Credit Crunch", "Food inflation soars by 19%", "Rationing and Rubble, the last time the economy was this bad." (Picture of St. Paul's Cathedral surrounded by bomb damaged offices and houses during WWII). Books on the desk include The Kibbo Kift, Woodcraft Folk and Hargrave's book Summer Time Ends. It was not something to shout from the rooftops about, but interesting and sensitive enough.

Joachim Koester's "The Hashish Club" has a large black-and-white period illustration and two green lamps with a jittery black-and-white film of cannabis leaves. So what?

Tacita Dean has twenty black-and-white archive photographs intensively annotated like a film storyboard. But no film on show, and you know I don't like annotation.

Seth Price has converted small computer files into large routed sheets of veneer panels. The negative spaces, remember those Foundation art classes, are obscenely costly pieces of exotic wood. The positive spaces are the white walls of the gallery and have little interactions; a photographer and his subject, a finger pointing at another person signing on the dotted line, a smoker being given a match (without the flame), and a person resting their brow on a hand with a glass and a helping hand coming into picture. Technically excellent, conceptually wasteful. Not as meaningless as elephant dung art but more damaging to the eco-system than a herd of elephants' farts.

The Three White Desks by Simon Starling have an interesting origin with the early work by Francis Bacon who had opened a modern design office. Now the desks are re-interpreted from different resources and three stylish desks result. The biggest and the first is about two metres long with luxury fittings, finished in white with chromed handles. The second one is slightly smaller, smaller handles, less luxurious fittings. And the third one is beautifully constructed, perhaps from beechwood, the joints show and have not been covered with paint or lacquer. The handles have been reduced to wooden bars. Nice wood, wrong scale, a bit mean on the original idea of Francis Bacon's. But his was made so long ago and this third reincarnation could have come from Ikea, on a lucky day.

The four large C-prints are by Darren Almond, I haven't been to exactly the same landscapes, but it makes travel attractive. The images would probably satisfy a Taoist.

In contrast leaning against the end wall of the gallery is a large black metal panel etched with very delicate marks entitled as "All the Dead Stars". Oh well, better luck next time Katie Paterson.

There were two videos and a trio of animatronic heads by Nathaniel Mellors. The walls of the installation had a thick cladding of carpet underfelt, quite pleasant in itself and certainly helpful for the acoustics. To get to the pieces in sequence of course you have to walk in front of seated or stationary standing viewers. There must be a better way. I noted "A small step from cannibalism to recycling", was that the one that included the line "Christ's lunch inside God's bum", no, that was the second video. No, I can't watch ham actors reading from paper scripts. The animatronic heads were fun enough but the mechanism intruded on the action, the singing wasn't so memorable. Another skipful for Edmonton and London Waste.

Rachel Harrison's 58 digital inkjet prints were well explained by a dad carrying his small son, holding him up at eye level. With the title of "Second Voyage of the Beagle" it sets the viewer off on the right tack, and is just nicely visually literate. No individual titles needed, no annotations, no graffiti, no diary and much more light than at the Darwin exhibition at the V&A. I think this theme could generate editions of like-minded prints from world travellers. When my daughter was four I bought art gallery postcards and decorated the space above her bed with them. It must be good for visual literacy.

There was a tiny video, an overlarge sculpture with ping-pong balls. And a tactile column of paint-splashed buckets. One incredibly little girl launched herself toward the column like an alter-modern-day tree hugger. Mum turned round just in time and swept her away from the collision course. Tate exhibitions need a tactile room for children and the blind. I'll come back to that idea later.

I was quite disappointed by some screens of projections of "Liquid Crystal Environment" shown by Gustav Metzger. Besides the modernity and the random one-word titles it was naive bordering pathetic. In the 1960s art colleges there were works by the Light Sound Workshop and many more things at Middle Earth. Even a decade later in the conference industry with programmed slide projectors, soft-edge masks and some clever rostrum camera work there could be more sustaining effects than this. Sorry, too simplistic, a bit lazy. "There is too much Spectacular, very simple art." Touché, I've nicked that quote from Nic.

Now it was immediately apparent what Walead Beshty was doing sending fragile cubes of safety glass by air and Fedex. Six pieces, lazily arranged, but thought provoking in themselves. I once sent a Finnish cast iron casserole to Scotland in its manufacturer's corrugated card box, that was just the one Royal Mail journey and they broke one of the lugs. Walead Beshty's five Kodak NC color films went through X-Ray security machines on different air routes. The processed films provide interesting patterns, just one was spoiled by a huge fingerprint slap bang in the centre. Oops.

Lindsay Seers' contraption was showing something on screen within and finished with a rope noose on the outside. A teenage girl slipped the noose over her head and her father invited her "Do you want to hang yourself?" in a volunteering sort of a way. Her mother wasn't concerned but looked on saying "This is Art?" The viewers are good today, letting out all their honest gut feelings.

Louis Gréaud's "Tremors where forever (frequency of an image, white edit)" is a room fitted with 24 vibrating boxes on the floor and four lighting arrays projecting feint, animated, glowing light pools on the walls. The floor occasionally vibrated underfoot. It's boring enough but to those in Italy right now with the aftershocks of the earthquake it would be nauseating.

In the next room yet another time based production with a translation process about a plover. Marcus Coates, if I had known I was going to the multi-screen cinema I would have brought my own pop-corn and bucket of soft drink. There has been some fantastic Japanese cinema on television recently. Why is there such a rift between art films and films as gallery art?

Tris Vonna-Michell's installation "Monumental Detours/Insignificant Fixtures" takes the biscuit. Some thoughtful person has taped a sharp corner of a glass table with black gaffer tape, a kind consideration and strategy in preventing accidental circumcision. It's all minimal setting and microscopically insignificant content.

Out into another arena and there is an uncomfortably quadraform mushroom cloud of Indian metal cookwares and vessels by Subodh Gutpa. Massive, towering. The title is "Line of Control" and seems to present the nuclear weaponry Pakistan and India each have facing their common border. Don't do it, don't go there. Take away the toys from the boys. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, they all tell us don't do it. Don't think about it. I have the brass key with red enamel that turned Operation Hurricane into a mushroom cloud and gave subsequent generations exposed to it children suffering from genetically triggered diseases, alter-nuclear. Take Altermodern into the post-nuclear age but without the detonations, without the trade in centrifuges, the uranium. We know about weapons of mass destruction. Even when there are none we still have wars. Imagine when there are dealers in Polonium-210 just as busy as Colombian drug barons and with the same moral standards.

Now Pascale Marthine Tayou may have hit upon something, all that spiralling plastic pollution in the Pacific gyre will end up encapsulated in sedimentary rocks, perhaps even dead coral, another thousand years and someone strolling along the beach in Dorset might find something similar to these. Not really but it's a nice metaphor. The group of ten pieces is an interesting start and the second, circular installation on the floor develops the idea nicely. My daughter had a toy from the Science Museum shop where she had to scrape away the stone dust from a plastic fossil. It makes sense to think this way. Who will have the patience to scrape away at the sedimentary layers encapsulating the Tate Gallery and reveal this show one thousand years henceforward? When the Sahara dust clouds fell in inch-deep layers on all the cars in Valetta, Malta, it took us hours to rescue the Hillman Minx. Those were the days when modern had a fashionable meaning.

Mathew Darbyshire's "PALAC" featured shaky, hand-held dance video in a banal arena. More children want to play with the blocks and the gallery staff tidy up afterwards! Family groups race through at a high speed, "Don't touch dear", "What's that?" And they are gone. Three seconds on a website, two seconds for a sculpture, one second for a painting. Unplug all the time-based media, save power. John Prescott won't be happy, he wants us to boil just half a kettle at a time to save on wasting electricity.

So far I have been quite disappointed, but I shouldn't be. I've checked through my notes and almost half the work is fit for purpose. The problem of course is that the title, the raison d'être of the exhibition is unproven. Quad erat demonstrandum.

All this and finally I found Peter Coffin's wonderful combination of original projected animation combined with selected works from the Tate's collection. I recognised many of them though I hadn't done any homework, it wasn't necessary. The music enhanced the excellent animation. Could it even qualify as a son et lumiere? It's a pity it was "Untitled (Tate Britain)". The man I spoke to agreed it was spectacularly good. It almost had "Complexity that took time. It was energetic enough that I had to stride from end to end of the gallery, not quite a lesson of slowness, but some sort of a path, a Peter Coffin itinerary, which we shared". Damn, these words have that familiar ring. The weavel words of a French art critic and curator have eaten into my mind. But I didn't alter my original thesis, there is no such thing as altermodern. Just bad art and good art. This show would be all the better for getting rid of the half. Altermodern, mais non, c'est votre grand chier-en-lit! (Excuse my French!)

Perhaps only Peter Coffin's work approached the title of the show, and an American just like much that has influenced Britain since the 1950s. The English Channel does keep British cultural values apart from the old continental philosophical and aesthetic traditions. We did after all populate North America with English speakers. (I hear the Quebecois and Louisiana Cajun aiming their hunting rifles!) POW! There you are, just like a Lichtenstein. Peter, you are welcome to do a real job of curation, but don't let it hinder your own creative work. I wonder if Hans Ulrich Obrist's, "A Brief History of Curating" could be used for pressing Nicolas Bourriaud like one of Darwin's now extinct species? No alterations needed. Or just one pin through the neck and another Papilio glaucas for the collection, is that too cruel?

Just one passing thought about tactual art for children and the blind. There is a room installed with hanging bamboo. It smells just like you would expect dry bamboo. You sidle through the clattering curtain. That very day a group of blind people enjoyed themselves, though the blind dog had to stay outside. Why not get more blind people to judge the Turner Prize or this Altermodern Tate Triennial. Maybe they could hear something in the time-based media that I just haven't the patience for.

So for a final footnote, let's just go and see the Rothkos hung beside the Turners. American antemodern versus English altermodern?

I have never before seen Turner's three landscapes painted on the same canvas. Rothko's nearby work went well enough with that. But the roomful of brooding dark Rothkos, that could drive you to . . . perhaps Melancholy and Cannibalism. Every time I look at a Turner I see his genius towering ever higher. Alter-Turner, impossible. Altermodern, nonsense. What do you think Tian Fan Fan?

© Brian Marsh, 17 April 2009 email initiative.cafe@btinternet.com