TIK - SCRATCH
Some Sunday afternoon thoughts after a few TIK workshops and the TIK EKO conference in Brussels Nov 26th 2010.
When I first was invited by OKNO, a year ago now, to be introduced to the idea of wind time as a time parallel to our community agreed world clock time, I thought… YES!
What a beautiful idea to try to disconnect from our restricted rhythmic main mean time and search for a time in which I can meet the absolute mere freedom to explore a whole (brave?) new world of ideas, people, problems and solutions, far away from our reduced cultural frame of rules.
Considering and concerned about our aggressive ego-and war-based neo-liberal actuality, I believed there must be something really beautiful and important going on in a TIK, a Time Inventors' Kabinet. I saw a kabinet who's members re-invent time, who disconnect from actual present time agreements and start from scratch.
To recapitulate on time:
The world's clocktime is based on the movement of the planet earth in relation to the sun's LIGHT.
Our planet moves around its own center in 24 hours, divided between night and day, and around the sun in 365 days.
Not to mention its relativity at high speeds and some corrections to be made now and then, world wide international agreements made sure we all talk about more or less the same reference of time. It is linear, going to a certain point pointed out by the principles of an arrow, rhythmic, repetitive, reliable.
We invented clocks to measure time and read it, to capture it and use it. Trains should run on schedule, nobody misses any appointment. A bomb doesn't miss its target.
Wind energy is based on the movement of the planet earth in relation to the sun's HEAT.
Temperature fluctuations on the earth's surface, made out of water and mountains, create air pressure deviations that make the air move and create wind.
We invented wind mills to measure it and read it, to capture it and use it.
But since the earth's surface is a living organism temperature and pressure fluctuations are unpredictable and so is the wind not linear, not structured, not rythmic and certainly not repetitive. Wind as we know it, changes energy and direction from inch to inch and every split second. Wind has a playful character you cannot rely on, and therefor we just love it.
But what exactly is windtime suppose to be?
What is there to search for in a Time Inventors' Kabinet?
How to really disconnect from clock time and start from scratch?
Where do we start? Where or what or when actually is scratch?
Is there, during life-time, a timeless space somewhere in which scratch exists?
(Not to say that after death there would, let's not go there…yet)
Or shall we just make the playful wind lift us and guide us towards new points of view?
But isn't that actually what ART is meant to do anyway? Make us spaces and times for new points of view on both knowledge and facts?
Maybe a metaphor for the content of scratch might be its questioning itself.
By questioning the out of time space, automatically, one looses grip, one starts floating in an empty headspace, one wants to fill it up and find a fertile basis again.
And here I come to my personal challenge within the TIK project: can I find a mental space where maybe time is not, where all references shift, and can I make it detectible and thus visible?
In other words, can I make art?
An attempt:
Starting from the collected wind and other open green data, and using them as any other source of energy, as I will also need electricity, I'm thinking about setting up a short but infinite image-loop projected by a 16mm film-projector, or maybe two.
A looped film-image is moving without following the pre-directed time-arrow. It is moving but not towards anything, it could be as ephemere as it is infinite.
Also the screen will be moving but not going anywhere. As a curtain in front of an open window wind moves the screen and makes the image go in and out of focus. A wind fan makes the screen move, the collected wind and open green data make the fan move.
Here is a draft:
http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php/tik_scratch_setup.jpg?w=120&h=84
With the technical support from the windclock builderds and the arduino guys who collect and export the wind data, I hope in the end to get to a piece of art that exposes the Tik idea. And I hope for now to open a talk on the content of it.
with love
Els van Riel