SLOMO
SLOMO is an exhibition about time and memory. How can they be stretched and molded into physical space? What tensions does this gesture provoke?
Curated by Dea Khalvashi and Maarten Van Mieghem as part of our two-week residency in Recyclart Brussels.
It is fashionable to speak of objects as barren entities and juxtapose this with the fundamental relations that connect them. The fact that there are words on a piece of paper, that the paper is placed in the hands of the reader, etc., instead of reinforcing the primacy of relations over objects, affirming the world, which is "...the totality of facts, not of things," we point toward a different kind of dynamic.
The relational undercurrent that finds its expression in the works presented at SLOMO is that of the objects themselves. By positing themselves as relations and not objects, they create a tension intrinsic within the distinction between the two fundamental categories that have been key players on stage so far. How is it that something which is clearly an object an art piece, lays claim to embodying relationality? Precisely by identifying itself as a relation, it invokes a tension.
The tension thus created is itself a relation and refers back to the object in which it finds its own origin. By acting as two separate poles as well as the rope strung between them, it begins to carry the virtue of receptivity. We speak of receptivity in the spirit of Simone Weil, who defines it as a state of openness, never straying too far in any one direction at the price of becoming isolated from its counterpart.
Consider the notion of time, which is a central theme of the exhibition. We feel as though time is the water in which we live, something that has an existence outside of ourselves. But alongside this conception of time, there exists a parallel dimension to it, a sense that it originates within us and is projected outwards as a way of organizing the world around us. The artist hovers on the border, drawing on the stream of memories that they imbue into their work. The tension begins with an attempt to convey a memory, an event that actually took place, and the problematic nature of memory itself, insofar as it allows for bias and editing to enter. By allowing itself to sustain the tension, the artwork affirms its identity as both a relation and an object. But how is it that the subject of memory makes its way so pertinently into the artworks presented at SLOMO? When we speak of memory, we mean not only the mental act of recollection of past events but also what the French philosopher Henri Bergson called 'habit memory.' A painter dips their brush in the palette intuitively; the body remembers to do so on its own, having performed the act repeatedly.
A pianist cannot do away with the power of muscle memory and the importance that it plays in their professional training. Memory finds its way into the artwork not only through the symbolic and representational content with which the artist imbues their piece, but also through the purely physical process that contributed to the making of what is now placed in the exhibition hall. The artist, regarded in this way, becomes a kind of memory automaton, having a creative capacity insofar as it is similar to the capacity of breathing.
Remembrance can be seen as a transfer back to a state of mind that one had at a particular time in the past. Yet one feels that the two cannot be identical. We hold a memory in the palms of our experience, but the experience itself is not a thing of the past but merely accommodates it. Sartre refers to our ability to somehow be in the presence of two different mind-states filled with nuanced sensations as 'double consciousness.' By bringing memories out into the open via the medium of the artworks presented at SLOMO, we have explored the possibility of a third layer. By molding memory into physical space, we remain in a state of so-called double consciousness while being in the presence of that which most intimately embodies it for us.
Written by Nick Kurkhuli for SLOMO
We will be with you shortly
An exhibition at Terrarium, Sint-Lukas, Brussels, on the 3rd of February, 2023.
“We will be with you shortly” focused on the idea of ‘lull’ in the arts. A lull is an interval where no specific activity or transformation is occurring, almost mundane. However, for many, the lull is an integral part of their creative thinking. Faint Inexactness, and unclearness are just some words that come to mind when referring to the term "lull". A sensation that the exhibition evoked in its viewers.
The visitors at “We will be with you shortly” were confronted with a feeling of pending ambiguity. As this time-based exhibition is centered around the activity of waiting, the viewer is integral, as the participation of the viewer lies in the act of spectatorship and waiting. There is a sensible slowness to the act of constructing and destruction of the exhibition that took place over the span of four hours, playing on the idea of stealing time, too.
