Week 3

Workshop 

This week’s class was another change in the structure of the module. This semester instead of two lectures during which we were supposed to draw during the showings, we had one lecture during which Miranda made special 5 minutes breaks for us to draw and write.  I think the inclusion of breaks during the lecture was a good change because we could watch the lecture and then draw/write, not missing the material prepared by Miranda. 

Your wast of time Olafur Eliasson 

Full photographs can be found at https://olafureliasson.net/artwork/your-waste-of-time-2006/

This is a very interesting piece of work. Six tonnes of ice blocks, believed to from around AD 1200, were transported to Berlin to be exhibited in Neugerriemschneider gallery. 

‘It is a challenge to verbalise time itself, even though, paradoxicallytime, talking takes time. Describing time in conversation tends to take away the duration from it, as it is mostly described as an idea or concept.’ ~ Olafur Eliasson

I very much agree with that statement. Time is a construct defined, shaped and labeled by humans to help with comprehending time and how it is passing. 

In this piece Eliasson tried to visualise the time to the audience. With the ice blocks from a glacier formed over 2,500 years ago, moved from their environment in which they have spent many centuries, to an art gallery in which they melted in the end. Every person who entered the chiller, who touched the ice took away time from that ice by melting it. 

Outer Space Peter Tscherkassky 

Outer Space Peter Tscherkassky, 1999

During the class I said that this film made my brain ‘relaxed’ which even in that moment it felt like a wrong word to describe the feeling. Another word I used was ‘calming’ what was a bit closer. Later that day when I was thinking about it I came up with a different word that felt a lot more accurate to what I wanted to say (which is still probably weird to most people). The slowly increasing chaos on the screen oddly translated to my mind quieting and following the ‘story’ in the film. 

Film starts with a young woman entering a suburban house at night amidst eerie atmosphere. The moment the door closes behind her the world around, as well as the film it self, starts to distort- splinter, multiply, collapse, tear, flash and shatter. The film used by  Peter Tscherkassky to create this edit of the clip was taken from Sidney J. Furie’s 1981 film The Entity. In the film the woman is possessed by an evil entity, but in the Tscherkassky’s version it almost feels like the woman is fighting with something evil, yes, but coming at her from all around, not from within; it feels like the film itself is attacking her and the word in it. In the increasing ‘violence’ we get to a point of total chaos both in visuals and sound which in the end, slowly goes back to a semblance of normal.