Drafting Winds

A period of time is the amount of time in relation to some cycle, usually in relation to specified points in time. The time periods allow the definition of time units (minute, day, year). Time units are known periods of time, which the mind accepts as a source of comparison with other periods of time. The spirit of the time, Zeitgeist, is the set of ideas, opinions and worldviews that together characterize a historical period of time. Drafting Winds are the swirling movements between times, between bursts, that blow between the concrete and the singular, between the ephemeral subject and endless change.

 

The desire to move freely through time and challenge its forward and onward movement, together with the built-in tension of the utopian attempt to capture the reflection of time, are echoed in the creative acts of the participating artists.

 

The exhibited works, created in different time periods and over varying lengths of time, each respond in their own way and time to the layered here and now, to the complexity of its events and the drafting winds. What they share is that they all seek to rewrite chapters in time through material and form - to dismantle or even disintegrate and then rephrase time and its particles, to examine and move its joints, to trace its remains, to tease it without contempt, to feel its pains, to deny it or challenge it, and from all of these to offer an alternative to the existing order.

 

From the actions of disrupting and interrupting time, or the desire to go round in its cycles, from forward, backward and sideways movements, from skipping, or moving in steps so minute that they seem like halting, new layers of spirit and matter are revealed.

In some of the works, the present is reluctantly juxtaposed with the pasts, accentuating our simultaneous existence. Others try to extract from our memory an impossible whole, thus exposing our transience. The winds that penetrate into the chapters of time and blow through them or between them, causing them to expand or contract and sometimes conflict, make it possible to sail with them above and beyond the times.

 

 

"In the meantime, days will pass, the sun

will rise and set, and we will not feel it.

And in a year, we will say:

‘What, a year already?’

And other such nonsense.

And we'll laugh merrily as if

It is the days that pass, and not us.”

Hanoch Levin, The Constant Mourner, 1992

 

 

Michal Niv, Curator