Hours,
minutes, seconds. This is how time elapses. It is almost always perceived in
different ways both objectively and subjectively. In terms of philosophy time could be defined as
the irreversibility of succession which allows experience. In terms of psychology time means
the passing of the present into the past and of an expected future into the present as
experienced by human consciousness though in different persons.
It was film, through which speed entered the pictures and radically
changed our perception. The pictures learned to move, in the beginning very
slowly, then increasingly fast until
they finally threatened to overtake themselves. And it seems to be film of all media by which
artists today, in the time of an unlimited flood of pictures, try to stop the speeding up of
pictures and to prepare the "end of speed". As heralds of a need which is perhaps the need of
society as a whole, they cut down speed to real time for the actual time of "life out
there" (Boris Groys). They discover slowness and arouse a new awareness for the time which time needs in order
to pass or to march on. How long is a second, how long is a
minute, how long can an hour be? The experience is connected to that of waiting as a basic existential experience of man,
waiting for something to happen.
The exhibition at Kunstraum Innsbruck assembles artistic and filmic
contributions, film and video material which make us aware of this feeling and perception of time and at the same
time asks us to spend time - if one really wants to watch all the exhibited works in full
length, one has to spend more than a whole day. Yet since time is one of the most precious
resources of our modern life, viewers will hardly have enough time to do so. Hence the exhibition
intentionally exceeds the time one normally spends in galleries and at the same time
emphasizes the artists concern of gaining an expansion of time for art which it usually
and in its classical forms does not have.
Fred Zinnemann`s famous western "High Noon" from 1952, starring
Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, is one of the first movies in the history of film, whose story develops
(almost) in
real time, in which the term of the action almost coincides with the length of the movie as one can
observe by means of several clocks shown in the film.
In their "Kanalvideo" Peter Fischli and David Weiss from
Switzerland show pictures shot in a dark system of sewers by means of a mobile
camera, the usual method of controlling sewers. The video gives the impression of a fast ride through an imaginary "Time
Tunnel" or of being drawn through time rushing forward or backward, giving the viewer subjective
feeling of the speed of time.
In his most recent work "Bootleg Empire" Scottish artist Douglas Gordon
takes up Andy Warhol's famous "Homage to time", a movie in which Warhol directed the camera
towards the New York Empire State Building for hours, without interruption and without moving it. As
an homage to this work and to an artist for whom time was always an important
subject. Gordon now directs his camera towards Warhol's film.
Pia Greschner from Hamburg works with a slowing down of time. She
presents three films, all shot in the bluish twilight. "Blue Hour 1 - 3" shows persons in usual
situations which are intensified by a slow-motion and by the light. "This stretching and subjectivization
of time turns a moment into an event", explains the artist.
The late English film director Derek Jarman managed to invoke the inner
picture of time, its actually inconceivable dimension of eternity and
transitioness, by means of the monochromy of the color blue, presented in his last film "Blue" for 74 minutes and
accompanied by an insistent voice-over.
"Pit Music" by Joachim Koester, a video recording of a
vernissage - like music performance, plays with the difference between the musical composition and its documentary
recording. The music which is heard throughout the video is not always synchronous with the
pictures. This play with the different levels of time causes a shift in the
scenario: the audience,
waiting and almost looking bored, becomes the actual lead.
In their 16 mm film "I'm coming home in forty days" the Dutch artists Jeroen
de Rijke and Willem de Rooij move the camera along an imposing
iceberg, an impressive monument
of frozen time. The shifting perspectives and light constantly change the appearance of the
icebergs stereometric forms - a precise and profound work on the perception of time as
eternity at the moment of aesthetic experience.
Swiss artist Beat Streuli is a stroller and observer who watches people
in the public fields of tension - in the streets and boulevards. While doing so time
passes. The artist contrasts idleness with hectic life as for instance in his video "Allen Street" in which
he cultivates idleness, the supposedly futile "waste" of time.
Rosemarie Trockel, who lives in Cologne, shows in her
"Wollfilm" how a woolen sweater is slowly but surely unraveled because the one crucial thread is
pulled. In eager
anticipation one expects the end, i.e. the exposure of the naked body.
Finally the exhibition also presents a Journey by Train from Bonn to Berlin
in real time, broadcast by a German TV station which - surprisingly - takes
its time every night to help viewers make the long night hours pass more
quickly.
The exhibition is curated by Udo Kittelmann. |
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