Ren Coelho.
The speed of Time has kept accelerating, (Paul Virilio).
Time is without doubt the most essential element in
the universe. Everything that happens only happens because we measure
it against the yardstick of time. It is our awareness of time, our
ability to perceive its significance in relation to our lives that
lies at the heart of our human condition. As our understanding of
nature has continuously altered throughout history, so the very
concept of time has undergone many changes. A 'second' must have
meant a very different thing to Aristoteles compared to what it
means to us today. Unless an objective comparison can be made, a
second remains an abstract and utterly relative idea, irrelevant
perhaps to the classical mind, while it may be tangible to us now.
It is obvious that our understanding of time is closely linked
to the technological developments that allow us to quantify time
in ever smaller (or larger) units and to organize our sense of reality
around it.
But time is not merely a relative physical entity, measured on
an atomic clock. It can be any number of things. Once we speak to
an astronomer, a psychologist, a biologist, a historian, or to the
man running to catch his train, the gamut of possibilities for perceiving
timeframes opens up.
From the perspective of the individual, time is a highly subjective
experience. And, as such, it has always been at the centre of the
artist's fascination. Whether it was in the stretched time of tragedy,
in the allegorical allusion to it in painting, or in musical form,
by giving shape to its measurement, through the ages artists have
reflected upon the nature of time.
But to make use of time itself as a tool for artistic expression
may arguably have begun with the invention of the printing press.
A writer or a poet was now able to share his imagination with the
reader on a large scale. This reader would spend a certain amount
of time, determined and moulded by the artist. He would enter into
a reality that only comes into existence through the intermediary
device of the book. Seen from this angle, the technology of printing
was the benchmark invention that started a whole process.
It led us into the world of contemporary dynamic media, such as
film, video and computing, and their artistic use as a timebased
medium for expression.
IMAGO
In my previous exhibition, IMAGO, findesi cle in Dutch
Contemporary Art, some very clear examples illustrated the fascinating
contributions that time based arts have made to the visual arts.
Ricardo F glistahler's PANTA RHEI (Everything Flows), showed
slowly passing clouds on two small monitors, built into an archaic
lead sculpture, while every second a drop of water fell from a funnel
onto a granite block. A hole in the stone, apparently caused by
the dripping water, underlined the power of time.
In POMPE, Boris Gerrets used the allusion to the ancient city to
create a metaphor for frozen time. On a twoscreen animation video,
he then reconstructed the place as a mental space in which reality
only interferes as death. At the supreme moment of the narrative,
our attention was violently drawn away from the screen to two death
masks on the wall, which we were not able to see before.
Bert Schutter's MILL x MOLEN showed a sculpture, consisting of a
metal frame containing twelve video monitors in the shape of a Dutch
windmill. On the screens, the sails of the mill flashed by, displaying
the contrast between static form and dynamic content.
But, without any doubt, the most lucid and poetic, illustration
of an artist using time as plastic material was Bill Spinhoven's
ALBERT'S ARK. On top of a sculpture, resembling both a medieval
sundial and a futuristic spaceship, a small video camera was mounted.
On a video monitor hidden in the sculpture, the spectator saw his
own image, distorted by means of a computer device, designed by
the artist himself, which he called The Time Stretcher. This instrument,
which stretched the space between the 625 lines that make up a (PAL)video
image, caused a time difference of roughly three seconds between
the top and the bottom of each image. In this manner, the viewer
was confronted with his own, gradually delayed, image and movement.
Thus, Spinhoven illustrated, rather elegantly, Einstein's Theory
of Relativity: bending time causes the deformation of the other
3 dimensions.
THE SECOND
Seven years after the IMAGO exhibition, I have seized the opportunity
to take a second look at the development of contemporary artists
who express their ideas through technological media. THE SECOND
consists of 17 timebased sculptures, created by 12, often young,
media artists. Once more we are confronted with a multitude of highly
original interpretations of and reflections on the nature of time
and the technologies that make use of it.
As a central installation, in the exhibition there is Peter Bogers'
HEAVEN. In this work, time is referred
to as absence. As a space can be defined either by what we do or
do not find in it, Bogers' work is about a subtraction of time elements
that add up to a tangible experience. In a small, completely empty,
whitewashed, 3room apartment, we encounter the remnants of the
life that was previously led in this house. On 17 small blackandwhite
monitors, we catch 17 glimpses (lasting one second each) of various,
haphazard, fragments of movement. Together, they display domestic
life: a door is moving in the draught, a cat snores in front of
an absent heater, a baby is at its mother's breast, curtains move
in the wind, a coffee cup is being stirred, a hand caresses a body
and, as an explanation of the reason why the needle got stuck on
the gramophone record, a fragment of a TV image, registered in a
studio during the Kobe earthquake.
Bogers' domestic microcosm continues in his work RETORICA.
In this case the subject is the interaction between father and child.
Short moments of communication between him and his son are sampled
and played back in such a manner that they create a reversal of
roles. Bogers' manipulation of image and sound reveals an unsuspected
potential.
Bogers magnifies a hidden dimension: another of his very personal
media sculptures, SACRIFICE,
display, on a large photo, a complicated setup in stark contrasts
with a tiny little 2"x3" image in a glass box that is the core of
the work. Through the magnifying glass we see only the artist's
mouth drinking the water of the very bathtub in which he is lying,
or is he perhaps drowning? Events that happen cannot be undone.
Perhaps the catastrophic view which Bogers displays in HEAVEN
is appeased in BOREALIS by Steina
Vasulka. For what is selfevident to man, may not be so once we
consider the thought within the perspective of the larger forces
that govern nature. Their cyclical character strips time of its
direction. BOREALIS consists of
4 vertically placed projection screens, on which, bymeans of a construction
of 2 video projectors and 2 sets of mirrors, 4 images are displayed.
The images show seascapes, filmed by the artist in Iceland, her
country of origin. The movement of the water, however, alternates
between forward and backward. The manipulation brings to mind the
idea of eternity, in which time is no more than an endless field
of flowing matter.
Another confusion of conflicting time/reality frames is created
by the irony of Bert Schutter's LES
BAIGNEUSES. The work alludes to the famous painting by Renoir.
Entering the space, the visitor is again confronted with the sound
of splashing water and giggling girls. As he walks in the direction
of the source of these sounds, he must go through the curved corridor
that leads to the projection screen. There, he is detected before
he ever reaches the screen. A sensor then tells the girls to flee
from the water, and as the spectator arrives at the screen, only
the images of an empty pond remain for him to see. This conceptual
work is a playful reversal of Schroedinger's Quantum Mechanical
Paradigm. Events only exist as long as they can be observed. Here,
the event is prevented from being observed. Ultimate beauty remains
fiction unless we create it within ourselves!
While in this work the spectator never gets to see the work, in
Bill Spinhoven's I/EYE, he never
escapes its gaze.
This seemingly simple piece has become an icon of interactive art.
The artist's eye fills the screen and follows every movement that
takes place in front of it. For the first time since Altamira, art
takes revenge for being looked at. As it looks back,we are being
caught in the vicious circle of identity. In another of Spinhoven's
works, THE LOGIC OF LIFE, he
elaborates on the psychological confusion caused by looking but
not knowing whatwe are actually looking at. A huge machine, remotely
resembling a film projector, is running smoothly at high speed.
As soon as the light in the space is reduced, the machine remains
lit by a number of computercontrolled LEDs that vary in frequency.
The machine appears to run in a seemingly illogical manner. Various
times and speeds run amok, backwards and forwards apparently just
for the purpose of projecting images of the artist attempting to
fly. His fascination for mechanics is shared by Fiona Tan.
Her piece, WITNESS, consists of
a mechanical piece of clockwork in which the weights have been replaced
by 5 monitors of various dimensions, each representing a time element:
a day, an hour, a minute, a second and a frame (1/25th of a second).
Images are displayed on the monitors, which illustrate these particular
time elements, underlining the subjectivity of time. During the
day, these weights gradually lower until, at the end of the day,
they will have to be hoisted up again. Her use of the metaphor of
the clock brings to mind the allegorical representations in which
the hourglass used to indicate the fate of the flesh. This aspect
comes into view in another of her works, ATLAS
OF THE INTERIOR.
While browsing through the Internet, she came across the images
of 1700 deepfrozen slices of a human body. It appeared to be the
body of the murderer Joseph Jernigan, who, on being sentenced to
death, had donated his body to medical science. In this installation,
the visitor is requested to wear one of the white coats available.
The body is reconstructed on two monitors, while images of the slices
are projected onto the visitor's white coat. Reflective texts, spoken
by the artist, accompany the confrontation with this peculiar case
of recycling.
THE SKIPPING MIND by Bea
de Visser is also a work that attempts to reconstruct, or rather
reanimat, a reality that belongs to the past. The installation
consists of two parts. Part one is a combination of 25 painted portraits.
The portraits are painted after a series of photos of an anonymous
woman which Visser found in an old book in a market in Prague. After
having brought these faces onto the canvas, de Visser digitized
the paintings and used a 'morphing' programme to put the image into
motion. The result is shown in the adjacent space where a projected
image revives someone who has longsince disappeared. You can sense
her endearing and nostalgic connection with this anonymous person
whose virtual face vacillates between reality and fiction. It is
almost as if time has a face.
FACE SHOPPING by A.P. Komen
shows a very different rendering of the human face. On four, 2x3
meter, adjacent projection screens, four closeups of young women
are shown. Each of the girls has a nervous 'tic'. As these images
are looping in fragments of a few seconds, these 'tics' become obsessive.They
are the many 'forgotten moments' of uncon scious behaviour that
reveal true emotional content.
The REANIMATIONS of Christiaan
Zwanikken are also erratically emotional, be it in a very different
way. In a fivepart installation, the remains of birds and other
animals are reanimated using microprocessors. The combination
of the evidentlypresent technology and the animal skulls, bones
and feathers, causes an ambiguous effect. Hilarious, but also rather
chilling. For the objects really seem to come back to life with
a great deal of movement and noise.
It is Kees Aafjes who most wittingly explores our problematic
relationship with (art)objects. As Aafjes sees it; an artist has
to call for attention and appreciation during all his whole life
in order to survive. To accentuate the irony of his view, the wingless
creature in FOUNDLING mumbles:
'Please, touch me', in a mixture of Spanish and Dutch. Whenever
a passerby responds to this request, the insect proclaims his satisfaction
in various degrees, to an almost organic level.
His CREDIT ART is a pastiche
of a credit card machine. The visitor is invited to enter his card
in order to obtain a work of art. On a small screen on the side
of the machine, the buyer is then confronted with the demolition
of his 'flexible friend'.
Contemporary life has its pitfalls for the art viewer, but MARACAÏBO,
ships that pass in the night by Pieter Baan Müller is an installation
in the best traditions of 20th century Dutch constructivist painting.
3 identical computer monitors are placed on pedestals. The left
and right monitor show only a monochrome rectangle, the left red,
the starboard light of a vessel, the right green, portside. On
the central monitor, a black (bottom) and grey (top) horizontal
rectangle represent, respectively, the ocean and the sky, with the
horizon separating the two in the centre. The image is moving up
and down, suggesting the rolling movement of the sea. From time
to time, the screen in the centre is blanked by flashes from the
lighthouse at Maracaïbo. At random, the centre screen changes
radically and is filled with the image of the hull of a passing
red ship. This impression is created by a simple diagonal streak.
As Mondriaan could evoke the hustle and bustle of New York streets
in his Boogy Woogy paintings by placing a few yellow squares on
a canvas, here, too, a whole world of content is revealed through
the dramatic use of primary forms and colours.
Another more sculptural use of form is applied by Jaap de Jonge.
In O.T.S., he displays 28 crystal
balls in an octagonal showcase. We could be looking into the future!
Each one shows a video by a different Dutch artist. To a certain
degree, de Jonge abandons his individual stance as artist and creates
in his work a public place, a medium for the expression of others.
In a world of ever more technological media interaction, this is
perhaps where we are heading.
I would like to conclude this personal rerview of timebased artworks
with TIME/PIECE by Boris Gerrets.
In a way, this piece is a monument to time: time as a paradox, time
as a succession of fractions of reality, time as the astronomical
entity governing nature. A small monitor is mounted inside a bronze
construction, the kind we know from sundials or globes. It carries
an inscription that reads Time is the mobile image of immobile eternity
(a quote from Augustinus). We are unable to decipher the nervous
image displayed on the monitor: what we can see is a rapid (1/50th
second) sequence of stacked images. But when we approach the piece,
the monitor starts revolving. Gradually, a single image appears
stretching over the circumference of the globe. The movement of
the monitor makes the images fan out over the whole circle of its
trajectory.
Now it shows the development of time laterally instead of punctually.
The revolving monitor displays a series of urban scenes, people
and cars moving about in a strange unrealistic manner. They belong
to the past but are oddly present in their stroboscopic three dimensionality.
We can move around the piece ourselves and discover different aspects
of the panorama. The work defines time as interaction between conflicting
movements, which result in the creation of space: the movement inside
the image, that of the image itself, the movement of the spectator
perceiving it, and the reference to the larger astronomical movement
in which he is caught.
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