Tempor[e]alities
Exhibition
2022
Cycle I: Landscapes of Time
30.06.-09.07.2022
Cycle II: Unfolding Archives
15.09.-23.09.2022
at Format (*.strk), Währinger Straße 128, 1180 Vienna.
Curated by Sólveig Guðmundsdóttir and Claudia Strate.
The Exhibition “Tempor[e]alities” centers artistic positions that approach time as moving interrelations between collective, individual and material experiences. Through their narratives, forms and methods, they make us aware of our presence in time: that at any given moment we exist in multiple temporalities, constantly re-locating our past and present selves in relation to others and our environment.
Flesh, earth, and water all carry within the movements of time – the endless cycles of becoming and unravelling, of decomposition and regeneration, of erosion and disintegration. Landscapes and oceans remember, and so do our bodies, becoming archives of ever-changing, interconnected histories.
The exhibition takes place in a vacant Altbau apartment, about to be renovated. In this liminal space suspended between its past and future, the exhibition becomes a speculative cartography of scenarios and moments in time, hosting artifacts in the state of (temporal) flux and documentations of future histories.
As the writer Lola Olufemi observes: “the future is not in front of us, it is everywhere simultaneously: multidirectional, variant, spontaneous. We only have to turn around.”
The artworks shown in the first cycle of “Tempor[e]alities” explore material traces of time and give us a glimpse into the manifold ways temporality is perceived. They examine the various ways objects, environments and humans change with the passing of time, which can take the form of decay, erosion and destruction, but also growth, regeneration and evolution.
By considering temporal existence from multiple perspectives – objects, landscapes, or the different lifespans of organisms – the relative and multilayered nature of time is unveiled.
The exhibition’s timescape is one of long duration, sprawling in every which direction, incorporating a (speculative) future glance into human communities, and the ever-developing landscapes and life forms of earth.
As inhibitors of dynamic archives, we tell stories about ourselves to find our place in time and feel stuck in between. We look at the moon and get lost in the vastness of cosmic time. We stay in the moment, yet are observing the past, the stars as they were thousands of years ago. We feel the verity of our own breath as we watch oceanic and earthly worlds dissolve and evolve again.
With artworks by Adina Camhy, Kevin Daryl Ferdinandus, Natalia Gurova, Selin Karaman, Maximilian Prag, Roman Roth, and Anna T.
Cycle II: Unfolding Archives
The second cycle of “Tempor[e]alities” considers the act of archiving, not solely as a method of storing the past, but as an exploration of being and becoming.
A universal timeline of progress is imposed on all planetary life, with the help of technological advancements designed to bind time and space into a manageable whole. Machines and models not only collect and store information about our lives, but translate them into detailed, readable patterns. But in what ways are the traces we leave behind part of who we are and might become?
The artworks examine ways of chronicling our existence, using different approaches and media. Instead of being divided into an elapsed past, a configurable present and an inevitable future, the currents of time are presented as multidirectional. In this sense, unfolding archives can be considered an act of disrupting and rethinking systems of chronological and geographical classification.