Wintersemester 2022/2023, BA/MA Visuelle Kommunikation VK_Startseite
✎ · Bells End The Day, 2023
Bells End The Day revolves around the theme of simulations as a shared cultural practice that allows us to understand, keep track of and enact the passing of time. Circular processions, so-called circumambulations, have their roots in European and Islamic pagan traditions and are believed to have symbolised the passing of the seasons or the movement of celestial bodies like the moon or stars. As the first person player of the lower screen tries to encircle their world, however, it keeps on changing and rearranging itself, never quite returning to the same place twice. In contrast, the upper screen displays a scripted continuation of the late german artist Hanne Darboven’s work. Darboven developed a number system that assigns a value to each date, which she meticulously noted down on thousands of pieces of paper throughout her life. There, her calculations continue, writing themselves into an ever-changing sea of clouds. Both processes act as self-playing games with no end, walk- ing without going anywhere or “writing without describing anything”, as Darboven herself put it. By performing time as a sort of ritual, they allow us to better position ourselves in our daily routines, being “to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable” (Byung-Chul Han).
