What is time? Can time be compared to a line – unique, straight and continuous? Does this line have a beginning or end? What if one day things simply ground to a halt? If you froze in the middle of reading this text, raindrops froze mid-air, birds froze in the sky, everything on the planet stopped in its tracks, the entire universe completely ceased moving except for the passage of time itself? Will anyone ever experience a moment like this? Aristotle and Leibnitz believe that time cannot exist independently without the chain of events which make it up. Time is made up of the changes and circumstances, which it comprises, and otherwise time does not exist.
Other philosophers including Plato and Newton perceive time as an empty container into which things and events can be placed; but the container still exists independently of what (if anything) is placed in it. American philosopher Sydney Shoemaker pursues this idea of “empty time” in a theory where he proposes a small finite world divided into three zones, namely A, B and C. People in Zone A come to a complete halt for one hour once every two years.
While the freeze in Zone A is taking place, Zone A appears to those in Zones B and C to be pitch black, since no light can enter or exit the frozen zone. A similar event takes place in Zone B for an hour once every three years, and in Zone C, this happens for an hour once every 5 years. A global freeze occurs every 30 years. No one witnesses this global freeze, but everyone is aware it takes place. On this day, inhabitants of this strange world celebrate with “empty time parties”.
Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘homogeneous, empty time’ is something that we consider for this exhibition. The time simply passes, similar to clock and calendar. In ‘homogeneous empty time’, one day, one moment is the same as another. It continues from the past to the future and thus it is “eternal return of the same”.
Time is something ubiquitous and connects us with history and ancient time. Time is physical, mathematical, a part of the universe, inhuman and cruel. To work with Time, you need to choose a concrete attitude. It can either be romantic, or it can be scientific, it can also be sociological, and it can be philosophical and so on. This exhibition focuses on the two perceptions of the empty time by two artists, Lyota Yagi and Takehiro Iikawa.
The two artists have totally different approaches towards Time in their artistic practices. Yagi considers directly time-based media such as music or video. He manipulates and distorts time within music or video compositions, or uses physical media like CDs, LP records and music tapes. His series of work “CD” (2011) are created by peeling off vaporised aluminium from CD-R and sticking the pieces onto the canvas. Whatever the content used to be, the memories or the music from the CDs now exist between the fine layers of aluminium and canvas’ rainbow-like surface.
His piece “Vinyl” (2005-) is an LP record made from ice presented on a record player playing a very subtle kind of music. As time passes, the grooves of the record melt and the music fades away to become noise, while the audience enjoys an elusive and ephemeral melody.
In the video work “Stealing Time” (2007), Iikawa challenges human perceptions of time. Having informed everyone on the team except for one player, Iikawa "steals" this player's time. The artist records the player's reaction when the Futsal match unusually finishes twice as fast as usual. We see how the human perception of time is not precise.
In “The Clock for Practice of Time” (2006-) series, Iikawa made videos over the course of 24 hours, visually showing what time it was. His works are concerned with the relationship between people and time, nature and the urban landscape.
-Platform China (HK)
Image: © Lyota Yagi
