Twenty-four hours over seven days. The time was filled with stillness. The actions were minimal. The emptiness was unrelenting.
Marking Time V is part of a series of recent performances on the task of getting through time. This performance was in the Palazzo Mora, in Venice, Italy.
The room that I chose for my performance was the last one on the first floor of the building, with windows on two adjacent walls. There were tall wooden doors at opposite corners of the room, and a wooden cabinet built into the wall at another corner. The ceiling still retained frescoes from the 18th century. The wood of the doors and cabinet were carved, with ancient hardware, also of that era. The windows at one end of the room overlooked a small canal.
In the room I placed two black wooden chairs. A black-wrapped bundle sat on one of the chairs, waiting for me, its contents hidden. A single light lit that chair. But a red glow emanated from a heater placed on the floor near a door. The scent of roses drifted in the room. A clock could be faintly heard ticking, chiming the hours.
Twenty-four hours over seven days.
I find that words escape me in trying to describe this work. The pictures give you a sense of what occurred. The response by audience member James McAllister might also give you an idea of how the week unfolded, or the writing by Sandrine Schaefer on the VIPAW blog, http://veniceperformanceart.tumblr.com/, dated January 14, 2015.
What I can say is that I have entered a new phase and relationship to my work – as a result of that extended time in Venice. It was assisted by some decisions that I made in advance. Initially I was only going to do one afternoon of performance. The expansion to seven days occurred only a week or so before I came, when another artist had to cancel coming.
It gave me an opportunity to consider time more radically than I have had a chance to do in the past. I decided that I wouldn’t change the materials or actions that I thought I might do, but to take more time doing them. I made a decision to only engage in one action each day, or possibly fewer.
I thought about how we operate in time, through time, in so many different ways. Sometimes we feel as if we are in a race against time, trying to accomplish as much as possible, and scheduling our activities strategically to make the best and most efficient use of it. And sometimes we waste time, squandering it, or letting it slip away. And sometimes we are just trying to get through it.
This performance in Venice was the first time that I ever felt willing or able to simply ‘be’ in a performance, to not feel obligated to do something, express something. Or perhaps more accurately, to let ‘being’ become my obligation, recognizing that it is, in fact, doing something. How that unfolded, what and when I chose to do anything, was completely open. Being present was the obligation: to be present with the time, in the time. Marking its passage with my full attention.
Certain recent experiences have led me to reconsider how I think of time and how I will move through it for the rest of my life. It was on those matters that I concentrated during the Venice performance.
