Saturday 6 September 2008

Can you see the time?

How it passes, slowly, quickly, a jump here and then it stands still?

My mind's been running circles around a couple of abstractions: concepts and prepositions - too much post-structuralism to deal with relationality. The connections between things. It's still running, mind you. My first venture into it was the idea of island time when I was on Eigg: moving differently, circular not linear, depending on the tides and the ferry.

Yesterday at lunchtime another representation of it occurred to me. I finally had opened all my mail at work from the past six weeks, had decluttered my inbox - less than a hundred seems to be the definition of that, and finally I turned attention to my calendar. It's a daily one with a piece of art for each day. Stubbornly it proclaimed: Gesa, don't worry, it is only 9 July, you're about to go to Eigg, to Berlin and the summer is ahead of you.

The summer on my office floor.


Can you see the time as it passed?

Paul Klee, Die Zeit, 1933
Watercolour, ink, plaster
with gauze and cotton on wood
approx 40x50cm (?)
Museum Berggruen

Catching time, making it stand still while it falls apart was at the centre - see the clock hands - of a collage piece by Paul Klee I saw in July in Berlin. It's definite timing: five minutes to seven o'clock. It sits across jumbled, skewed rectangled shapes of various shades of yellow, red and brown, fabric, plaster and paint. It's an inconspicious piece amongst to many other great pieces in the exhibition.

And still, it nags you persistently: What to do if time stands still at the wrong moment?? At five to seven.

2 comments:

Bensa said...

Süsse, ganz wunderbar, wie bereits gesagt. Bei Präpositionen fallen mir die "vorher" und "nachher" Bilder ein. Ich glaube, ich habe vor dem Sommer besser ausgesehen ;-) Küsse aus der Schweiz

Gesa said...

Auch so, Suesse... genau an das hatte ich auch gedacht: nicht an dein vorher/nachher besser/schlechter, sondern dass zeit sich auch in gesichtern spiegelt - im guten wie im schlechten :) ... aber das geht ja nicht nur in eine richtung, zum glueck!!!