Time in the Art of Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima, and Rene
Transcription
Time in the Art of Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima, and Rene
KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 brill.nl/kron Time in the Art of Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima, and Rene Rietmeyer Karlyn De Jongh Global Art Affairs Foundation, Leiden, The Netherlands, +31 6 3943 7090 info@globalartaffairs.org Abstract In the history of art, time is not frequently taken up as the artistic topic in itself. While time has been sporadically present in the work of certain single artists such as Claude Monet or within movements like Futurism, where speed and change were highlighted, only over the past several decades, has time become a more explicit topic in art. In this article, time is addressed by discussing the work and thoughts of three contemporary artists who have taken this concept as a guiding motif in their work: Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima, and Rene Rietmeyer. Their work makes clear that time in art is strongly related to actual and individual life-time and is concerned with creating an attentiveness to human existence in relation to time as a continuing entity. Keywords time, visualizing time, art, life-time, death, infinity Introduction As a curator for the project Personal Structures: Time Space Existence and together with my colleague Sarah Gold, I organize exhibitions and symposia and publish texts dealing with the concepts of time, space, and existence. The project was initiated in 2002 by the Dutch artist Rene Rietmeyer, who defined these concepts as essential themes for his own artworks. His plan in inaugurating this project was to influence developments in contemporary art by creating Personal Structures as a platform for artists to communicate and to develop their work through exhibitions, symposia, and publications. The June 2007 symposium in Amsterdam featured the concept of ‘time’ and represented the first in an ongoing series of events. In organizing these events, we intended our goal to be to present artists from various generations and different parts of the globe. Each of these artists engages with the concept of time in his or her own © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/156852410X561880 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 89 way, thereby actively demonstrating a wide diversity of temporal engagements. The presentation and staging of these perspectives challenge viewers to interrogate and define their own positions towards time. While the combined concepts of time, space, and existence have been a nexus for discussions in philosophy, physics and other fields of study for many years, art seems to have been left ‘behind.’ Certainly there have been artists’ movements for which time and space were an issue, such as in Futurism or Cubism, but for them time as such was not a primary focus. As well, there have been single artists who took up the challenge of depicting time. The impressionist artist Claude Monet, for example, painted a series of works depicting the exterior of the Cathedral in Rouen, France. Each of these paintings shows the façade at a different hour of the day and at different times of the year. However, here too time is one element among others and not the central topic of the work. An additional complexity exerts itself in that art works of the past may carry temporal dynamics that were unintended either by the artist himself or the culture of the time. In other words, evolving history becomes a means of interpreting time. Working with the Personal Structures project, I meet artists who claim they do not have ‘thoughts’ about the process of their work; they ‘simply’ make the work. Any ‘thoughts’ are either previous assumptions or by-products that may be experienced by art lovers or art historians alike. Roman Opalka, by contrast, is an artist whose art over the past 45 years has confronted the problem of time as both subject matter and methodology. The difficulty in formulating a position towards temporal concepts and in presenting such philosophical concepts in an artwork also becomes evident when considering the age at which artists interested in time have developed their practice and thoughts. Through the Personal Structures project I learned that many artists go through a searching period before being able to conceptualize these ideas in their actual work. In other words, thoughts about time take time to develop. One needs life-experience before confronting the task of representing personal attitudes towards time in a two- or three-dimensional object. In this article my goal is to explore the subject of time in specific artists today. The subject is sufficiently complex and personal that no artist approaches time in the same manner. Before investigating Opalka, Miyajima, and Rietmeyer in more depth, I will briefly note two other artists who have worked specifically with time. An artist seriously occupied with time is the Japanese artist On Kawara, whose art and life merge into inseparability. On Kawara’s series of works manifests his daily existence. His Today Series—also called Date 90 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 Paintings—is likely the most well known: a monochrome ground on which month, day and year are painted in letters and figures. On Kawara started this series in 1966, and he continues to paint these works to the present time. Theorizing about On Kawara’s concept of time is problematic; the artist himself has never published any personal written statements. His only statements are his artworks. Although it remains speculative to say something about On Kawara’s understanding of time, some reflections are offered by his work as well as by the comments of other artists. For instance, Opalka who met On Kawara once remarks on his fellow artist’s ideas: [On Kawara] says: “if I am not finished between Berlin and New York, then I must destroy this Space-time, this period, this Date Painting.” To me that is not logical, because time is in everything and because that is the case, it should not be necessary for him to destroy his painting. This determination or fixation that he has, seems to be completely Japanese. It has nothing particular to do with time.1 While the issue about destroying a particular work if the painting is not finished before midnight is clearly a calendrical point, it also happens that On Kawara sometimes paints two Date Paintings in one twenty-four hour period. For example, NOV. 3, 1989 exists twice. In addition, the way of painting a particular date, the language and calendrical conventions depend on the location where On Kawara finds himself when he is painting: NOV. 3. 1989 seems painted in the USA, whereas 26 OTT. 1990 is more likely to have been painted during a stay in Italy. It seems On Kawara focuses on the day in relation to himself as a person, rather than an overall time that counts for everyone, and seems in that sense more concerned with the concept of existence within time and space, than with time as such. Another artist dealing with time is the Taiwanese performance artist Tehching Hsieh. After growing up in Taiwan, Hsieh came to the United States in 1974, where he stayed as an illegal immigrant for fourteen years, until he was granted amnesty in 1988. During this period, Hsieh made five One Year Performances in and around his studio in New York City, and started his Thirteen Year Plan. His performances were based on severe and self-imposed restrictions, such as not seeking shelter and choosing instead to live outdoors in New York for an entire year, or imprisoning himself in a cage for a year, while neither reading nor talking. Using long durations such as these, Hsieh’s 1 Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold, Roman Opalka: Time Passing (Leiden, Netherlands: Global Art Affairs Foundation, 2011), 18. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 91 performances centralize time as the main theme of his work, making art and life simultaneous, showing they are integrated activities. As demonstrated by the restrictions of his chosen performances, Hsieh understands his biography as a life sentence. Since the millennium and released from the restrictions of the Thirteen Year Plan—a thirteen year period in which he allowed himself to make art, but not to exhibit it publicly—Hsieh is, as he told me, no longer “doing art.” His performances were so extreme and demanding that he has stopped actively making art performances. Now he is “doing life.”2 The work of the previously mentioned artists makes clear that certain contemporary art impinges on time directly in its impact on individual life times. This personal endeavor seeks to create a direct physical awareness of time. This is not, however, a solipsistic exercise; through this temporal awareness, the artist reaches out his vision to the viewer. The artwork thus functions as the medium of primary experience (the artist’s) for another fundamental experience (the viewer’s). As well, such art translates theorizing about time into realistic praxis. Thoughts and life are integrated, art and life no longer occupying a divide. To this end, an artist successfully working with time lives his thoughts and lives his art. As the Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer once said, “For 24 hours a day, my principal occupation consists of working as an artist, discussing with myself, and thinking about money that is to be spent. Earlier on I also did what others consider to be living.”3 And he adds in an interview for Personal Structures, almost 40 years later: “Life, as it appears, is a pale reflection of art, of artistic creation.”4 Rainer’s words show an awareness that for him a limited 24-hour day mercilessly demands priorities in the service of art. This demonstration of a direct awareness of time is active in the works of three contemporary artists: Opalka, Miyajima, and Rietmeyer. All three have dedicated themselves to time for a number of years. My selection of these particular three artists is based on the fact that they come from different parts of the world and represent different generations. On the other hand, their 2 Not only more established artists, but also younger artists represent the concept of time in art: some examples are the Belgian artist Kris Martin who addresses time using found objects, and the Japanese performance artist Sasaki who draws life-time on the beat of the heart. Each of these artist’s work is deeply individualistic and personal. I have chosen not to focus on these artists in this essay, but rather on three others who have spoken extensively about the ‘matter’ of time and whose work has been consistently obsessed with time over a period of many years. 3 Arnulf Rainer in a text from 1971, as quoted by Peter Lodermeyer in Peter Lodermeyer, Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold, Personal Structures: Time—Space—Existence. (Cologne, Germany: DuMont, 2009), 402. 4 Ibid. 92 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 similarities show a general tendency in thinking about time in art. In this article, I describe their work, their thoughts about time, and how they realize these thoughts in their art and in their lives. The thoughts presented here are based on personal contact or on their statements in the symposia I organized. 1. Roman Opalka: A Monument to Nonsense Roman Opalka (* 1931, France) is a Polish artist who has spent the past 45 years painting the progression of numbers from 1 to infinity, a radical program through which he seeks to portray the passage of time. All Opalka’s paintings are dated with the beginning, 1965.5 In this year the artist started painting numbers 1, 2, 3 . . . on a canvas, using white paint (Figure 1). During the Amsterdam symposium Personal Structures: Time in 2007, Opalka said the following: All the machines we know of, the clocks, “tell” the time, but I “show” time, and that is something entirely different. This is the painterly solution to the question concerning what a visualization of time might be. In this sense numbers accomplish best what we up to this day may show of time in the sense of progression, in the sense of dynamics, in the sense of the unity and the expansion of time.6 Opalka starts each picture at the top left corner and paints from left to right, ending at the bottom right, using a “no. zero” brush to ascertain the graphical dimension and the legibility of the numbers drawn. The numbers are approximately 5mm high, a size that is easily visible for the artist when he is painting the work and allows him to paint the two circles of the figure eight, keeping the center open. To date, this has resulted in approximately 230 paintings, which he calls Details—each is a detail of the continuous series that started with 1 and goes on into infinity.7 Opalka’s paintings are not, however, solely a progression of numbers on a canvas. At least three significant additional aspects of Opalka’s work contribute to his interpretation of time. First of all, we encounter the background color of the canvas. While the numbers from 1 to infinity are painted in white, the background color changes 5 All of Opalka’s paintings are dated with the year 1965 followed by “/ 1-∞.” Different works are indicated by the first and last number of the particular painting. Each painting is an element of this one, continuous work and represents an element of the progression of numbers from 1 to infinity. 6 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 42. 7 This is the number of paintings Opalka mentioned in the summer of 2008. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 93 gradually over time. This change was part of the original concept: Opalka started with a black background, adding 1% white color for each canvas background in the years to come. The addition of 1% white was based on an estimate of a specific but merely statistical duration: at the time Opalka began this work, men born in his region of Poland were estimated to reach 75 years of age.8 Through a quick mathematical equation, Opalka concluded that by adding 1% white to each successive painting meant that he would be painting white numbers on a white background by the time of his 75th birthday. Now it is 2010. Opalka has been painting white on white for four years now, and he will be painting white on white until the day he dies (Figure 2). The whiteness he describes as well-earned; he deserves it after having spent all these years painting. White is certainly an issue for Opalka: he likes the idea that his hair has become white over the years and that his eyes have become lighter. Conversing with him in German also allows for a pun: weissheit (whiteness) or weisheit (wisdom). Despite his playful comments, whether he really enjoys it is unclear. Opalka’s position towards this seems mixed: on the one hand, having this awareness about our short life-time makes him enjoy his life every day; on the other hand, living out his program is a sacrifice for the artist, continuing to paint numbers until he can no longer stand straight in front of his canvas. Secondly, while painting his numbers, Opalka simultaneously records the numbers on a tape recorder in a monotonous voice. He speaks the numbers in the Polish language, his mother tongue. Similar to English, the enunciation of numbers in Polish is “logical”: the numbers come in order of appearance; the number ‘85’ is thus eighty-five and not, as in German fünf-und-achtzig or in French quatre-vingt-cinq. This way of articulating numbers stresses linearity and sequence over mere information. When his paintings are exhibited, the sound of his voice fills the room and creates a contemplative atmosphere. The audio used for these exhibitions is a mix of various recordings of spoken numbers; one hears numbers in a random order intended to reflect one’s usual haphazard thoughts. The artist chose this combination of an audio and visual display of time because it manifests two different times simultaneously: the linear time of the painting and the non-linear time echoing in one’s head as one views the painting. Opalka shows not only ‘time passing’, but also his lifetime passing. Even though his life-time is also integrated in his Details, most clearly Opalka’s life is recorded in his Auto-portraits (Figures 3 and 4): after each day of working in 8 Opalka was born in France to Polish parents and returned to Poland in 1935. 94 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 Figure 1. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/ 1-∞, Detail 893147-918553 (detail), undated, acryl on linen, 196 × 135 cm. Courtesy: Sammlung Lenz Schönberg, Söll, Austria. Figure 2. Roman Opalka in front of his painting at the Exhibition Personal Structures: Time at Arti et Amicitiae, 15 June 2007, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Work: Opalka 1965/1-∞: Detail 2910060-2932295, undated, acryl on linen, 196 × 135cm. Courtesy: Caldic Collectie, Rotterdam, Netherlands. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 95 Figure 3. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/1-∞, Portrait, Undat. Photograph, 33 × 24 cm. Courtesy: Sammlung Lenz Schönberg, Söll, Austria. Figure 4. Roman Opalka, Opalka 1965/1-∞, Portrait, Undat. Photograph, 33 × 24 cm. Courtesy: Sammlung Lenz Schönberg, Söll, Austria. 96 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 his studio, the artist takes his own picture, using a camera installation that stands in front of the canvas as he paints. The photos show the artist’s face, frontal, wearing the same type of white shirt and the same haircut. On the background is his painting, displaying the numbers he has just added. Because the visual aspects of the photographs remain rigorously the same, the facial effects of time are dramatized. When hanging the photographs, Opalka takes his own height as a reference, registering the change of his height over time— from 177 to 170 cm. Even though these photographs are called Auto-portraits, they are not merely self-portraits. In his own words, “I do not tell about my life; I make life manifest.”9 The inspiration for Opalka’s concept occurred in 1964, when the artist was 33 years old. He had been waiting for his wife in the Café Bristol in Warsaw, Poland. She was two hours late, and he had time to think about his future. Although the artist was already quite well-known, he was struggling with his work. He wondered how he might succeed in painting time. Previously, from 1959 to 1963, he had been painting his ‘hourglass paintings’ called Chronomes: white dots on a black background. He recognized his dilemma with these paintings. It was impossible to locate these works’ beginning and end, which could be neither measured nor determined. These Chronomes, he felt, lacked direction, but Opalka believed that time, by contrast, possesses an unequivocal direction. Opalka’s reflections were influenced by the question of ‘What is left to do?’ a popular point of discussion at the time concerning the end of art. At that point in the 1960s, painting seemed to have exhausted itself. Opalka, however, realized that no artist had dedicated his work entirely to time, painting one, continuous work: Opalka 1965/ 1-∞. Through this he found a personal way out of the impasse that threatened modern painting. Indeed, he claims that he saw himself as the last avant-garde artist.10 As he was waiting for his wife, the idea came to him that each dot could be a number. With this new concept, using numbers to show time, his formalist problems were also solved: his number 1 would provide a beginning, a direction; and since numerals are infinite, there would implicitly be no end. 9 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 236. The controversy about the end of art seems mainly a discussion about the end of painting. The sixties was the start of several new movements as a reaction to this. The Concept Art movement, of which Joseph Kosuth was one of the founders, or the Radical Painters, of which Joseph Marioni and Marcia Hafif are examples. I see Opalka outside these movements; he has found his own ‘place’ in art history by living out his individual program. 10 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 97 From 1 to infinity After the moment in the Café Bristol, Opalka took seven months to paint his first number: 1. This simple first movement—one small line—carried terrifying consequences: painting numbers from 1 to infinity for the rest of his life, doing nothing other artistically than painting ‘time passing.’ The awareness that this would be his life was overwhelming: “I already knew what this concept was the beginning of. I knew it would continue throughout my entire life.”11 After a few weeks, the artist developed a heart problem due to the excruciating strain. He explains that this tension was “not only because it [the concept] was so good, but because of the sacrifice it meant I would have to make a life long for this work.”12 He spent one month in hospital, and even today recalling this experience affects Opalka. Opalka claims that he better understands time as well as life at this point, although he quickly denies any deeper understanding: “How can you understand a thing as stupid as our existence? Maybe that sounds too brutal, but this existence makes no sense; it is nonsense. And this nonsense is my work.”13 For Opalka, despite our attempts, we cannot understand time. But in the end Opalka decided to accept living out his program of absolute futility. Even the excruciating awareness of painting numbers for the rest of his life, without purpose, did not deter him. For him, the urgency and origin of his program lie in its nonsense: not only the nonsense of art, but the nonsense of existence and time. His work is, as he says, “a monument to nonsense.” As he told Sarah Gold and me when we visited him in France for our Art Project Roman Opalka: Time Passing, Our life has no meaning. My work is the nonsense that manifests this. It is comparable with the German drinking a glass of liquor, or the Frenchman having a glass of wine: life has no meaning. The German and the Frenchman are right. They are also philosophers, but then they have to show it. That is almost hypocritical, but I think they should show it. The consequences are very different when you very seriously have these thoughts that our existence has no sense.14 The wish to make this ‘nonsense’ manifest may arise from the Polish mentality of that time. As the artist explains, Poland was a socialist country: 11 12 13 14 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 234. Ibid. Ibid., 43. De Jongh and Gold, Roman Opalka, 58. 98 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 It was a Marxist world back then. To work was the goal. Work was like a certain religion; it was something positive for the economy and for the people. This example, that is my work, is such a big nonsense . . . I can tell to no worker that what he does makes no sense at all. He needs to earn money. The nonsense of my work has never been so strong with regard to production; it is a productive mentality: I had to create something. But I made something that has no sense: I could not eat or sell it.15 Poland’s socialist climate was instrumental in developing Opalka’s concept. There were galleries in Poland that remained independent of the capitalist credo that “time is money”; for artists like Opalka such galleries represented freedom from commerce. The artist saw this as his opportunity. Away from a commercial atmosphere, Opalka claims to have enjoyed a freedom denied artists living in other parts of the world; he cites as an example On Kawara, who started his Today series around the same time as Opalka started his program. Time, for Opalka, moves continuously in a linear way without repetition. As Opalka told me in a meeting in Venice in April 2010, he cannot even repeat the numbers on his tape recorder. For instance, remaking a lost tape in which he spoke the number 1,000,000 proved impossible because his voice had changed over time. Opalka compares it to a river: “With my work it is something like a river, but the river has only one direction.”16 This continuous movement goes on into infinity. Despite the infinitude of time, Opalka acknowledges a beginning point. This concept of origin is perhaps a religious residue of Opalka’s, although we must not consider this in a purely spiritual manner. He does, for instance, speak of the Big Bang and even speculates that there may have been other Big Bangs; where the beginning lies, is unclear. The artist portrays himself as an agnostic. With respect to his paintings, he has described his number “1” as a Big Bang. But “1” is not only the beginning; according to Opalka, the “1” is everything, a unit. The artist also argues that he could have stopped painting after marking the “1” because in potential it contains all other natural numbers that are about to follow in the sequence. Opalka adds that the actual birth of the work is merely administrative information; the real source lies in the concept, whose date is difficult to determine. Time may be going infinitely in one direction, but the experience of time can extend in all directions. This is what he manifests with his spoken numbers. To clarify this, Opalka takes the example from his favorite philosopher Martin Heidegger in his book Feldweg [Pathway] from 1949, and compares 15 16 De Jongh and Gold, Roman Opalka, 61. Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 41. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 99 this aspect of time with going for a walk. Influenced by this book, the artist explains that “if you go for a walk, you go in one direction, but your head goes in all directions.”17 What happens in the interim, the relativity of how long the duration of an hour or two hours may be, cannot be measured. The mind goes in all directions: “What has happened in his head during his walk, that is time. The steps are already there, but in between the steps that we take, is our life, our thoughts.”18 This way of thinking about time is part of Opalka’s program. With this metaphor of the stroll, Opalka points to a time that is not programmed, but has a rhythm of its own. This temporal randomness is demonstrated by the spoken Polish numbers and is illustrated in his paintings: “The works are not all the same; they are different. This is also the rhythm of my existence: sometimes I do not sleep; at other times, I do sleep; sometimes I sleep more, or less. This is the best: not to program yourself . . . In my work I have created a program, but this program has a lot to do with this imprecise time span.”19 Being toward death Although time for Opalka is linear, it is simultaneously separate from life itself. His work shows the progression of numbers from 1 to infinity. On the one hand, his paintings portray time as an independently moving entity; on the other hand, the work addresses the time in which we find ourselves. The paintings are intertwined with the artist’s life: “I have chosen my life as the time period, as the emotion facing what would be time. This is the work of someone freer than any man in history has ever been before. He reflects upon his existence and thus, it is also an echo of philosophy, for example, Heidegger, the ‘existence’ is in my work.”20 As Opalka sees a direction of time, he sees a direction of life as well. In this quote, he refers to Heidegger’s Being-towarddeath [Sein zum Tode], and he seems to understand himself as well as his work as a Being-toward-death: “Heidegger’s Feldweg, his walk on the path through the field, that is like my work. I walk further into the landscape, the horizon goes on, with me . . . This is almost like what I do in my work. Beingtoward-death means that life is determined by the awareness of death.”21 Opalka insists that without knowledge of death, we cannot live a committed 17 18 19 20 21 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 41. De Jongh and Gold, Roman Opalka, 31. Ibid., 57. Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 40. Ibid., 238. 100 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 life. This attentiveness to death avoids morbid despair by illuminating an obligation to enjoy the one life we have. Even though Opalka describes himself as an agnostic, he admits that he ‘almost’ sees an element of Christianity in his work. The artist equates living out his program with a sacrifice to humankind and to art that involves consciously enacting the passage of time. He has been painting his numbers for 45 years, almost every day. Now he is not physically strong enough to paint more than one hour a day. Irrevocably restricted, he sees his work as a sacrifice comparable to Christ’s own Eucharistic sacrifice: “this is my body.” Opalka’s body makes itself present in every work, each painting a mirror of himself. Since Opalka’s paintings are his life, his work will be finished when he himself is dead: “In the work the concern [. . .] is for the completion of existence. This is a very special situation inherent to its construction. The work is always sufficiently there.”22 This means that Opalka does not have to complete a canvas in order for a work to be ‘finished.’ Being 79 years old, he now paints approximately 1 hour a day, but the work is as it is. One could even say that when Opalka painted the first number, the “1”, the l’unité, in potential everything was there already. About this beginning, the artist remarks: Of course, this was only in the sense of a concept. In order for it to be a work I had to make this sacrifice, otherwise it would only have had a logical basis, but would not be a work. My work simply contains all aspects of existence. My work is always virtually complete. It is no problem not to finish a picture. I have always completed the work. Like my life, it is always complete.23 As humans, we live only a short moment in time. But Opalka also speaks about infinity with regard to his life: “I cannot know when I will die. I know that I will die, but the moment when it happens is so infinite because no one will know that he has died. [. . .] In this sense we are eternal.”24 The knowledge of the moment of death is important here. We know that we will die, but we can never know that we have died: the artist constructs a nexus between his Being-toward-death and his idea that life, like time, is infinite. Death seems to be a difficult subject for Opalka: on the one hand he sees it as a liberation of living out his program; on the other hand, he fears it like anyone else. 22 23 24 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 42. Ibid. Ibid., 40. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 101 2. Tatsuo Miyajima: LEDS Equal Life In other parts of the world and in the next generation of artists there are equally serious and sincere attempts to address time in art. If in Opalka’s oeuvre we are confronted with the actual performance of a working out of lifepassing in time towards death, for the Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima (* 1957, Japan) time in art is effectively conveyed through carefully programmed LEDS. His goal is to raise an awareness of what he calls ‘The Life,’ an umbrella concept for the interdependence of time and existence, one he has only recently been able to articulate: Why I did not explain ‘The Life’ directly is because at the beginning of my performance period, I just did not have a clear mind for it, and until 1995 I was just too immature to use words and also too inexperienced to explain it. Like many others before me have also done, it means that it is easier to explain ‘Time’ as a concept than ‘The Life.’25 Miyajima’s ‘The Life’ is an English translation of the Japanese ‘Inochi,’ which refers not only to each person’s life, but also to that of animals, stones and plants. Miyajima explains that in the Eastern world, ‘The Life’ is taken as a totality; it refers to everything possessing life. Miyajima has focused on time since the 1980s. Just like Opalka, Miyajima uses numbers to express movement and change because, according to him, numbers are universally understandable. However, unlike Opalka’s handpainted numbers on traditional canvas, Miyajima represents ‘The Life’ by the numbers of LEDs in installation pieces that are both larger-than-life and delicate, fragile, almost to the point of seeming vulnerable (See Protrusensitive— xo. 3, Figure 5). Counting, he claims, gives one the feeling of “‘the passage of time,’ a ‘rhythm by counting speed.’”26 Each LED in Miyajima’s installations has its own predetermined speed; together the LEDs comprising an installation—sometimes as many as 1000 different lights—show various speeds. There is a calculated poignancy here. Each countdown or enumeration of numbers represents the life of an individual. The variations simulate the differences between individual lives: some people’s lives last 100 years; others “die” young. Miyajima’s diverse work started with performances, solidified as he began to make sculptural installations, and then changed again with his public projects 25 26 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 312. Ibid., 315. 102 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 and his two- and three-dimensional wall installations. Despite the variations, Miyajima’s work is immediately recognizable. Most are made with LEDs of numbers that count ‘up’ from 1 to 9 or ‘down’ from 9 to 1; zero is not shown.27 At the point when zero is expected to appear, there is a moment of darkness. In this way, as Miyajima explains, this numerical absence enlists the participation of the viewer. The non-appearance of zero is ‘louder’ than the bright lights of the other numbers: One other thing [. . .] is to emphasize the deleting of the zero. For example, 9, 8, 7 . . . the numbers go down in order. Zero will arrive naturally by prediction. At the moment the zero should come, it gets dark (no number). So, you can come up with the thought why there are no zeros. There, you can think about zero. So, the numbers go down in order and go up in order, that is very important and, in fact, that is my expression to let the audience consciously experience ‘Ku.’28 For instance, in his 2003 work Counter Void (Figure 6) installed in Tokyo’s Roppongi area, Miyajima goes against the superficiality of the nightlife in Roppongi and creates an awareness of our own existence. The work is 16 feet high and 164 feet long. The viewer is dwarfed, overpowered both by the size of the numbers as well as the light surrounding the numbers. The confrontation with the counting numbers is frightening and perhaps exhilarating in its relentless presence. Viewers must crane to view the work; close up, one cannot take in its entirety. Miyajima explains the absence of zero, ‘Ku’ as death: “Roppongi is [a] town of night and [is] filled with desire even more than [in the] daytime. I dare to bring ‘Death’ to such [a] night in Roppongi, bring ‘Darkness’ to the center of mass media. The artwork will create the black hole of ‘Death’ and ‘Darkness’, and offer [an] opportunity to think of ‘Deeper Life.’ ”29 In his numerical conception of time, the visible numbers 1 to 9 represent life, while zero functions as its counterpart. For Miyajima, zero is the moment of death; since death is not visible, a moment of darkness represents it. But nothingness is only one of zero’s meanings in Miyajima’s work. In stark contrast, zero’s other meaning is ‘vast quantity,’ by which the artist indicates future possibility and potential. The moment of darkness is thus equally the possibility of a new beginning, a new life. Additionally, the vastness of zero denotes an 27 In an interview with me, Miyajima admitted to have shown zero once, in the work Empty Sets. 28 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 317. As stated by Tatsuo Miyajima in 2003, on his website: http://www.tatsuomiyajima.com/ en/text/void.html 29 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 103 Figure 5. Tatsuo Miyajima, C.F. Protrusensitive—no. 3, 2007, 66.5 × 1.3 × 58.2 cm. 12 LEDs. Courtesy: Tatsuo Miyajima and Lisson Gallery, London, UK. Figure 6. Tatsuo Miyajima, Counter Void, 2003, neon, glass, IC, aluminum, electric wire 5 × 50 m (installation) / 1 unit : 3.2 × 2.2 m × 6 figures. Collection of TV Asahi, Tokyo, Japan. Courtesy: Scai The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan. 104 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 unimaginable infinitude, possible but inconceivable. Reflecting that zero means both the nothing and the plus, Miyajima returns to its original meaning. In a talk at TATE Modern in London on 24 April 2010, he explained death as a state of sleep, a preparation for the next birth. ‘The Life’ includes both life and death. In his work this is portrayed as the visible and the nonvisible. Miyajima rejects an exclusive conceptualization of his idea that ‘time is life;’ he insists it be taken realistically. As he indicated in an interview with me, “My work [. . .] does not indicate ‘Time’, ‘Space’ and ‘The Life’; my works try to live with ‘Time’, ‘Space’ and ‘The Life.’ ”30 Rather than theorize about time, Miyajima offers viewers the occasion to interrogate their own lives. He does, however, have his personal interpretation of time. In 1987 the artist articulated three central concepts: 1. keep changing; 2. continue forever; 3. connect with everything. Even though the first two concepts seem redundant to a Western person, Miyajima makes explicit that in Eastern thought ‘keep changing’ and ‘continue forever’ are not the same. Together, the three concepts comprise ‘The Life’. Three concepts Each LED in Miyajima’s works is set to constant change. He explains: “Everything keeps changing, life keeps changing . . . Even ‘keep changing’ is constantly changing.”31 The LEDs count in order 1, 2, 3 . . . or 9, 8, 7 . . . The next number in the sequence is predictable. When counting backward 9, 8, 7 . . . the numbers descend in a predictable order but at zero, the light goes out and there is no number. After this dark moment of zero, the counting starts all over again. The numbers continue, presumably forever. The two movements of change and of continuity are mutually-related elements in Miyajima’s ‘The Life.’ He says: “What continues forever changes ‘The Life,’ where the prime elements are birth and death. Both those changes and the process of changing continue forever. ‘The Life’ is forever, changing all the time.”32 The concept of ‘forever,’ however, has nothing to do with permanency, which the artist sees as a Western notion. While permanency certainly may operate in ‘to continue forever,’ it may also imply some degree of stasis or stagnancy. The Eastern Weltbild by contrast recognizes that a ‘shape keeps changing by movement and that continues forever.’ The movement, not the condition, is eternal. Miyajima adds, 30 31 32 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 319. Ibid., 313. Ibid. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 105 “‘Permanent,’ we use it, but one day we humans, or life, will die out. ‘Changing by movement’ does not die out.”33 Miyajima’s third concept—‘connect with everything’—is often visualized in his combination of LEDs with technical and natural materials. In one such artwork, his Pile Up Life project, the LEDs are connected with mud (Figure 7), combining nature and technology.34 In Miyajima’s installations one rarely encounters just a single counting LED. But even a single LED reflects the unity of numbers: for instance, the number 8 is digitally constructed of seven parts. By the inventive programming of the ‘on’ and ‘off ’ of these seven parts, all numbers can be created: 8 without its left two lines creates 3; without the top right corner, it is 6. Miyajima explains: “In fact, the number 8 contains all numbers. It shows one is many and many is one. One human is the same person, but the human character changes many times (many). But it is just one human life (one). ‘The Life’ is one form (one). That one life changes many times (many). The number 8 contains all these images.”35 In this way, each LED number is a unity or whole that contains everything: life and the passage of life-time through the numbers whose endlessly changing constancy continuously leads towards death, represented by the absence of the predictable and necessary number zero. The awareness of time: Art in You While change, continuity, and connection are generally accepted dynamics of life, Miyajima describes another concept that specifically addresses each viewer: ‘Art in You.’ Here the artist raises awareness about ‘The Life’ by compelling the viewer to confront herself or himself. Miyajima elaborates: My concept ‘Art in You’ is that the work uses a mirror which projects the inside of the body of the audience and they, the audience, discover the art inside of themselves. They notice ‘the Art’ which they had already in them. My artwork is the device for the audience to take notice of ‘their Art.’ Otherwise, without having any background knowledge of it, we will not be moved by seeing artwork coming from a completely different culture, language or religion.36 33 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 319. Exhibition “Tatsuo Miyajima,” Pile Up Life at the Lisson Gallery in London, UK, 25 November 2009-16 January 2010. 35 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 316. 36 Ibid., 313. 34 106 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 Figure 7. Tatsuo Miyajima, Pile up Life No. 6, 2008, 84 × 64 × 64 cm. LED, IC, stone (pumice), electric wire. Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery, London, England. Figure 8. Tatsuo Miyajima, Hoto, 2008, 549 × 208 cm, LED, electric wire, stainless steel, iron frame, installation view at Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito. Courtesy: Scai The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 107 Miyajima presents this mirror by reacting to world events: the project Pile Up Life, for example, addresses natural disasters and invites the viewer to participate by selecting a specific speed for the ‘counting’ LEDs. This viewer participation initiates what Miyajima calls “personal time,” which is the individual experience of time during an event that feels longer or shorter depending on the situation. For Miyajima this is the crucial understanding of time: “‘Time’ is definitely a personal thing. The Time concept [which] began in Greenwich in 1884 [was] the conceptual interpretation of a new modernism. It is based on the universe and an impersonal general theory. Essentially, ‘Time’ is the same as an individual’s death. It should be very personal. Individual death exists in an infinite variety of distinctions. One is not the same as others.”37 In other words, despite the ubiquity of constant change, permanent continuity, and unifying connectivity, at the core a personal, individual, and unique experience of time exerts itself within the human agent. The viewer is drawn into the work. If it is not through the mesmerizing power of the counting LEDs, it is through the use of mirror surfaces, such as in the work Hoto (Figure 8), or the use of sensors following the viewer as he or she moves around in the exhibition space in Mega Death (Figure 9). The ‘Art in You’ concept points to the idea of personal time: it is about one’s own life-time, as well as that of others, and it requires the acknowledgement of whether a particular death is “natural” or “artificial.” The work Mega Death does exactly this. Miyajima explains: According to the calculation of Brejinsky, Presidential aide to former US President Carter, war, revolution and dispute in the 20th century have lost human lives of 167,000,000 people. This figure, a terrifying number, equals to a total population of Italy, France and England of 1997. In a way this century has been an era caused by “Artificial Mega Death.” [The] “Death” of The Life which has been artificially and unjustly taken away has no individuality any longer. This “life and death” all becomes “death” in the same nature. The reason for this is because the destruction and division of individual “Natural Life Time” implies the disorder of [the] eternal rhythm from “life” to “death”, and to the “next life” which . . . life originally possess[ed]. [Artificial death] becomes a depraved “death,” which [cuts off the] eternal rhythm . . . [Artificial death is] not . . . a fertile “death” with a rhythm to its “next life.” This “death” has no longer the glitter to make harmony with “life,” with its individuality divested. The darkness of “Artificial Mega Death” is filled up with the same nature of “death” and only the terror of suspension remains. This work is my attempt to show the beauty of “Natural Life Time” as a majestic and universal symphony, [and] the contrast of terror . . .38 37 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 315. Miyajima’s statement of May 1999 on his website, http://tatsuomiyajima.com/en/text/ megadeath.html 38 Figure 9. Tatsuo Miyajima, Mega Death, 1999, LED, IC, electric wire, sensor, etc., 4.5 × 15.3 × 15.3 m installation. Installation view at the Japan Pavilion, The 48th Venice Biennale. Courtesy: The Japan Foundation and Scai The Bathhouse, Tokyo, Japan. 108 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 109 Death, like the cipher zero, is a dynamic paradox of division and unity, of finality and redemption. 3. Rene Rietmeyer: Proof of Existence Rene Rietmeyer (* 1957, Netherlands) creates abstract, three-dimensional wall objects. His so-called “Boxes” can be presented singly (see, for example, his Life from 2007, Figure 10), but more often they are hung in installations of various numbers of items. Additionally, decisions regarding the configuration and numbers of Boxes are taken anew in each exhibition space. Time here is less articulate; Rietmeyer’s work is more about his existence within time and space and refers to people, cities, and regions. The Boxes do not simply represent the visual appearance of the subjects, but rather they create a certain atmosphere. They convey Rietmeyer’s emotional relationship to the subject through form, color, texture, composition, and choice of materials. For Rietmeyer, the subjective, personal character of the work outweighs any aesthetic experience for the viewers: “The emotionality and subjectivity of my concept are an expression of my own existence and personality. I create an atmosphere that mirrors my very personal subjective thoughts about the subject.”39 The Boxes ‘contain’ Rietmeyer’s thoughts and express the experience of a specific region or—as with his Portrait of Joseph Kosuth (Figure 11)—a specific person he met at a certain place and time. He expresses himself with abstract means; Joseph Kosuth’s portrait comprises a bold statement with an initial vibrant red surface color, subsequently covered with a thick, strong white. The artist says that this type of portraiture is not so radically different from the portraits of Van Gogh or Nicolas de Stael. Only the imagery itself has developed through time, and he uses his own abstract language. The objects reflect Rietmeyer’s thoughts on a subject and, simultaneously, admit something about him, regardless of whether the result is aesthetically pleasing or not: “Ultimately, my work is nothing other than the proof of my existence.”40 In this way, the Boxes resemble the 30,000 year old hand print in the Chauvet cave in France. Each series of Boxes has a year connected to it. The image of Kosuth originates from 2008. Rietmeyer’s current installation of the Kosuth Boxes, based on his 2010 meeting with Kosuth, is slightly different from its predecessor: 39 40 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 396. Ibid., 137. 110 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 Figure 10. Rene Rietmeyer, Life #32, 2007, ceramic and glace, 16 × 16 × 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist. Figure 11. Rene Rietmeyer, Portrait of Joseph Kosuth, Roma, September 2008. In this series there is a total of 72 Boxes, all of which show several variations of white and red oil paint on wood. Each installation varies in size and may contain any number of Boxes. Each Box is 25 × 25 × 19 cm. Courtesy: the artist. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 111 still white and bold, but a little softer. As the artist explained at a much earlier period in his career, “That ‘same’ experience at another moment in time, the creation and execution of the series shortly after or much later, would unavoidably lead to a different result.”41 In this way, Rietmeyer considers each work as a unique moment of (auto)biography, a temporal experience captured in material and dimensional space. Although visually they might be different, conceptually Rietmeyer is similar to Opalka. For both artists, time is infinite (for Rietmeyer in both directions), ongoing in one direction regardless of our life and without repetition. Where Opalka focuses on continuation, Rietmeyer distills the moment, the ‘here and now’ experience within an ongoing, infinite time. As the initiator of the project Personal Structures: Time Space Existence, Rietmeyer is concerned with the nexus of time, space, and existence and refuses to isolate time from these other two conditions. Nevertheless, time makes itself felt in his work as an awareness of its intensity and pressure. Rietmeyer emphasizes the subjective character of his work: it is about his thoughts, his emotions, his awareness of both the passing of his time and the private space surrounding him. Predictably then, he is most deeply concerned with the passing of his own life-time. Rietmeyer resembles Opalka in metonymizing his work through his body and by extension his life. Rietmeyer also works to cultivate in others an awareness of passing time. He therefore initiated the Personal Structures project to broaden the exposure of his own work and that of other visual artists, such as Opalka, Miyajima, and others, to a diverse constituency. Because Rietmeyer’s work deliberately tries to create an atmosphere that will trigger a dialogue of sorts, he anticipates how others respond to certain colors. While color may be subjective, most people would pair red with passion and grey with contemplation, rather than the other way around. At the symposium TIME, Rietmeyer explains this relation to his work Life (Figure 10): For these Boxes I choose the color red because it is human and has a strong presence. I chose the size, compact; and I chose the material, ceramic, because ceramic lasts a long time, longer than wood. Within all their formal elements, with all their subjectivity, these ceramic Boxes represent all my thoughts, me as a total entity. These Boxes, Life, are proof of my existence. They capture my awareness of the time I could not 41 Peter Lodermeyer, Personal Structures: Works and Dialogs (New York, Global Art Affairs Publishing, 2003), 136. 112 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 witness myself as well as my personally experienced Life-Time. And, after I myself have died, each Life Box will continue to exist and communicate.42 For Rietmeyer, then, red is not primarily symbolic of passion or life, but plays a more concentrated role representing his life. Red in this way is a memorial color for human and for individual existence. The Boxes will remain long after the artist has died, and the red will testify to his work and his life. The color will ‘remember’ him. As well, red connects to its historical use and in this way the artist inserts himself in an historical time line: “So when I choose a color, the choice is always a combination of my momentary emotional condition and of the knowledge I gained about human thoughts made in the past. [. . .] With my consciously taken choices, I express myself and my awareness about human history and the history before humans, my awareness about Time.”43 Connecting the dots along the historical time line is less about story and event than about the emotional response to color and form. One could say that while red denotes life’s passion, its ‘body’ as well as its death, the cube/ box form represents the single container of a life, with its walls and enclosures, its shape and its contents. A box enacts the paradox of being entirely ‘there’ as identifiable shape, obstacle even, yet able not only to perform its ability to contain but simultaneously also to hide this interior. The box’s composition ensures its longevity but also compels us by contrast to acknowledge our mortality. Expressing the present Rietmeyer’s work is the expression of his personal reflection in and on time. Although the artist sometimes makes the work months after the experience, the Boxes represent an accumulation of impressions of the specific time and location of the work’s genesis: whether it was hot or cold, the artist’s financial situation or physical state, a combination of predetermined choices and the situation during the actual making of the work. This combination is an expression of the present. Biography is part of this process then. A Box series such as the beautiful Miami Beach (Figure 12) was in process for several years during the artist’s sojourn there. Learning about the area during this period affected the conception and execution of the work. Disregarding world events, Rietmeyer focuses on his own life. He is unapologetically straightforward 42 43 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 31. Ibid., 30. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 113 about this: “My objects become what they become. Always. Each Box I make is a honest result of me, my existence at that moment in time and space, an object from that specific time in my life.”44 In contrast to other Box series Rietmeyer has made, those comprising Miami Beach, March and September 2006 each is painted on canvas and has strong, vibrant colors. In terms of Rietmeyer’s personal connection to the work, each colored box functions as a biography of the artist’s time during that specific year. One could say that the boxes materially represent the artist’s attempt to capture his thoughts and feelings but without recourse to pictorial narrative. Art can show; it cannot tell. This intense and personal focus on his lifetime is not, however, self-promoting; Rietmeyer positions himself in the larger art historical landscape: “With this position within time, I mean: knowledge about the thoughts of other artists I communicate with, but also the knowledge about thoughts and works of artists who are already dead. Knowledge about us, mankind, about the world and the space and time we live in. The thoughts standing at the origin of the intellectual decision about how to construct my work come from somewhere. That origin is to be found in the time that has passed.”45 In this way, Rietmeyer expresses not only the time he himself experiences but also the time he has not witnessed: it is a combination of what he calls “self-experienced” and “non self-experienced time.”46 “All the knowledge I gained from such people who lived before my personal, consciously experienced time, have helped me in creating my own thoughts about all the formal elements I use to make my works.”47 Rietmeyer refuses to romanticize or sentimentalize his work, preferring a realistic encounter with the progression of his experiences. Acknowledging also a time before his own birth, he situates himself in a temporal timeline similar to that of Opalka: he sees his human life as a miniscule part of this relentless, continuous, linear time line. But unlike Opalka, this infinite time is without a beginning or an end. Time IS. Just as numerals are universal, so too is the box shape ubiquitous. As well, these two expressions are distinctly human constructions; they enact both a human presence and absence; their ‘thereness’ is the product of human history and personal life, even without the presence of the individual agent. Although he understands time as being infinite, Rietmeyer’s Boxes focus mainly on the past: his work originates in actual experiences. According to 44 45 46 47 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 31. Ibid., 28. Ibid. Ibid., 30. 114 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 Figure 12. Rene Rietmeyer, Miami Beach, March and September 2006, oil on canvas on wood. Each installation varies in size and may contain any number of Boxes. Each Box 20 × 23 × 18 cm. Courtesy: collection Mr. and Mrs. Levy, Palm Beach, USA & the artist. Figure 13. Rene Rietmeyer, USA, Siesta Key, May 2008. In this series is a total of 92 Boxes. All Boxes are made from several variations of red oil paint on wood. Each Box is approximately 18 × 18 × 13 cm. Each installation varies in size and may contain any number of Boxes. Courtesy: the artist. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 115 him, the conscious experience of something in the future is unthinkable as a subject. Thus, “we humans perceive time only as a result of memory. If we had no conscious memory, we would not be aware of time at all; we would only see the Now. The result of having memory and the creation of our way of measuring time cause our perception of time to appear as a line.”48 In a work such as USA, Siesta Key, May 2008 (Figure 13) the viewer confronts red boxes, exquisitely positioned in perfect symmetry. Since ‘boxes’ conventionally act as containers, an encounter with this work situates the viewer in—as some have described it a frustrating performance of looking but not knowing, of seeing but not opening. The three-dimensionality of the boxes acts as a further defiance. There is volume but no hope of access. The precise orchestration of the boxes, their mathematical shape and positioning, all recall artistic intervention. The unnaturalness of the work’s geometrical exactitude celebrates a conquest over human mortality. The uneven red color and the shadows cast by the boxes testify to the struggle of this expression of life over its eventual end.49 The passing of lifetime Rietmeyer concentrates on one’s vital point in time as well as on the passing of that lifetime. This tension between moment and passage brings with it an acute attentiveness to life’s brevity. Rietmeyer described this awareness as we were standing together in front of the house of the American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) in Captiva Florida, just a few days after his death: “An intense consciousness about Time, Space and Existence puts your own existence in a larger perspective, shows you how small you are, makes you realize the importance and beauty of being alive and makes you aware and accept the ‘finalness’ of death.”50 Rietmeyer related how Rauschenberg once told him something that had left a deep impression: when Rauschenberg was younger, he had believed that there was not enough world for him to discover. During his conversation with Rietmeyer and conscious of the fact that he would soon die, Rauschenberg admitted: “I am running out of time.”51 For Rietmeyer, a response to the swiftness of time is as direct as the viewer’s engagement with the boxes: “encounter your surroundings as aware, conscious and open-minded 48 49 50 51 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 28. Correspondence with Claudia Clausius, Dec. 2010. Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 398. Ibid., 30. 116 K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 as possible.” He adds: “Time itself does not stop. We just cease to exist.”52 By contrast, the Boxes remain. Indeed, his art justifies and redeems the harsh brevity of human life against on-going time: Being alive, sensing Life itself, is a fantastic feeling and stimulates many possibilities for activities. Being aware that there actually is no reason for our existence does not exclude that we could, or even should, do something beautiful, something good, with our existence. Life is precious and should not be taken for granted; having encounters with the world, with other living beings can be fantastic, if you are capable of seeing the beauty in the ‘otherness’. There is so much to see, so much to experience, life is much, much too short; it is a pity that I will have to die.53 When I asked Rietmeyer about the difference between him and Opalka, he replied with acerbic and humorous poignancy: [. . .] everybody’s understanding of Time will at least slightly differ. I relate to Time naturally mainly in relation to my own life-time, and my thoughts do not differ with Roman’s thoughts when it is about the ongoingness of time, and both Roman and I are very aware that our personal life-time will come to an end, but I will die and my life-time really comes to an end, my life-time stops. Roman however—he will die and go into infinity because he will not hear anybody, including himself, saying “Roman, you are dead.”54 Conclusion In this article I have discussed three artists investigating the dynamics of time in their artistic practice: Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima and Rene Rietmeyer. Leaving aside any conclusions, I have tried to show the various aspects of temporality that are, at least for these three artists, critical in their personal interpretation of time. In these instances of contemporary art, time is understood and possessed through a responsiveness to life’s limited span, especially in comparison with the infinity of time in general. The predictable ‘end’ of our own time demands our enjoyment of the moment. Promoting this awareness of time, together with a wish to leave a trace of themselves, is one of the main reasons for the impetus to create the art work. 52 53 54 Lodermeyer, De Jongh and Gold, Personal Structures, 398. Ibid. Ibid., 399. K. De Jongh / KronoScope 10:1-2 (2010) 88-117 117 References De Jongh, Karlyn and Sarah Gold. Roman Opalka: Time Passing. Leiden, Netherlands: Global Art Affairs Foundation, 2011. Lodermeyer, Peter, Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold. Personal Structures: Time—Space— Existence. Cologne, Germany: DuMont, 2009. Lodermeyer, Peter. Personal Structures: Works and Dialogs. New York: Global Art Affairs Publishing, 2003. Miyajima, Tatsuo. http://www.tatsuomiyajima.com/en/text/void.html. ——. http://tatsuomiyajima.com/en/text/megadeath.html.