Exhibitions have become the medium through which most art becomes known. Not only have the number and range of exhibitions increased dramatically in recent years, but museums and art galleries now display their permanent collections as a series of temporary exhibitions...Part spectacle, part socio-historical event, part structuring device, exhibitions – especially exhibitions of contemporary art – establish and administer the cultural meanings of art.

- Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, Sandy Nairne//Thinking about Exhibitions

I arrived on the final day of the exhibition and after poking about various corridors and cupboards sat down at the large work desk in the gallery and observed the beginnings of the day. One of the things that first struck me about Time Scale was the distinct sense of being trapped in the present tense. Two days had passed in which the exhibition had unfolded and taken place in my absence, and what I saw before me now was neither what had been before nor what was yet to come.

Every three hours the curators and art handlers would de-install current art works and install new ones. But the process would leak into the past and seep into the future, so that there was a constant sense of being lost inside the ever-present state of exhibition making. I could not know what serendipitous moments had occurred between the collisions of yesterday’s hangings. I could only glimpse a temporary unfolding of the duration of time and mark it in space with a word.

                  Pure duration, that which consciousness perceives…is not a quantity and as soon as we try to measure it, we unwittingly replace it with space.

- Henri Bergson//Time and Free Will

My task in the space was to respond to the exhibition throughout the course of the day, and I soon found that this response depended largely on when I was looking up from my desk rather than down at my paper. I began rather slowly, and tentatively, by familiarising myself with the light, depth and layout of the room, walking around it and gazing across it.

The first work I paused at was sitting on a plinth. This work remained in its place throughout the exhibition and was not removed. I did not realise at the time, as my hands were pulled toward it, but I ought to have known. It was One Million Years by On Kawara. The gravitas of such a lengthy duration gave weight to the air and rooted me to my seat; it provided the lens of long exposure through which other, more temporary works could be seen. 

A man came over to the desk. “Excuse me,” he said, “can you tell me which art works are being hung now; I can’t work it out.” Then pointing to the programme he sighed, “It’s all very confusing.” The curious thing about Time Scale was its inevitable production of confusion. A by-product of constant change and alteration seemed to be the thrust between clarity and not knowing. And somewhere in between these two states I found the happy medium of chance.

[Chance] wants to have its success incomplete and quickly emptied of meaning, one success is soon left behind for another…success wants to be gambled, and gambled again.

- Georges Bataille// Chance

For a brief few seconds an image of a fox crossed the screen and then disappeared. For what seemed much longer than it could have been, the sound from a DVD echoed about the room repetitively and infiltrated every sentence of thought with “…yeah, yeah, yeah.” For a mistaken moment a picture was there and then was not. The success and failure of Time Scale was undoubtedly defined by the exposure of its elements – time and scale. Never has the phrase the art of timing had more cause to be turned on its head. 

For the most part, this exhibition exploited the expressive qualities of Time Scale and took on the challenge of trying things out. Decisions about when and where to install work were made openly in the public sphere; speculation, discussion and deliberation were witnessed by both audience and art. Sometimes the gallery felt locked into a permanent space of preparation and waiting, ceaselessly modifying the juxtaposition of one work with another.

At other times a happy accident would occur and the composition would come together, forming narratives across space and making sense out of disparate works. Time Scale offered up an acute exposure to the chance and subjectivity of art and all the coincidences upon which that subjective success depends.

Writing: a way of leaving no space for death, of pushing back forgetfulness, of never letting oneself be surprised by the abyss. Of never becoming resigned, consoled; never turning over in bed to face the wall and drift asleep again as if nothing had happened; as if nothing could happen.

- Hélène Cixous//Coming to Writing

As the day drew to a close I found that the speed at which the works were moved had fluctuated, both in terms of the physical length of time for which they were allowed to remain in the space, and the perceived length of time for which I saw them there. Time became manifest in the drawing out of space through various works of art, and was slowed and stilled by the space of writing out the work.

As the curators hung and re-hung the exhibition they took upon themselves the process of re-writing akin to that of my writing-out. By engaging in an act of constant curatorial modification they slowed down the time attached to the art works, accentuating the moment at which they paused together, so that they could be re-read and absorbed into the consciousness of the true present tense – the temporary. All art was subject to timing, and all timing was subject to art.

Testing Ground seeks to bring together exhibitions, events and independent publishing from a number of colleges.  Testing Ground: Time Scale’s on-line catalogue is available to download from http://testingground2011.net/ where a full list of Artists and Curators involved in the show can be found.

E.H. Cocker is an Artist and Writer based in London, currently studying for an MFA in Art Writing at Goldsmiths.
 

All photography by Andrea Lopez Portillo