MEME
Athens
2019
Performance by Macklin Kowal and Alex Romania
Text by Andreas Brunner
REAL TIME BY ALL
An approximation to the now
text by Andreas Brunner
A hypnotising line, stretched throughout three walls of the space, gently sinking from the top left corner to the right bottom. One could argue that lines don’t exist in nature. The appearance of a line is rather the result of two meeting surface borders. In this case, the line is created by a dark blue surface on the bottom half and a warm orange surface on the top. As this line steadily strikes through the scenery, it is promptly interrupted by a third emerging shape. In the middle wall, on the border where the dark blue and the warm orange surface meet, a yellow half circle expands from the blue into the orange surface. With this half circle between the surfaces, a clear familiar image emerges on one’s inner eye. A memorised image of an afterglow, bright and intense as it can be observed in nature. The resemblance of the scenery to a sunset/sunrise becomes immersive. All of a sudden, the three colours and the seemingly random shapes that make the scenery become reasonable. Out of experience, the blue colour is interpreted as the sea, the yellow half circle represents the sun and the orange surface above the lambent sky. It is unavoidable to make reason of this scenario, reason that is the result of memorised imagery and a trained succession of knowledge to decode the symbolised. This symbolised image is strongly connected to the idea of time as well as the perception of time and to be more precise, it is an indicator of passing time. The familiarity of this particular scenery is always memorised as something ephemeral, a transitional state where either day time turns into night time or vice versa. This notion of passing time however is completely absent in this wall painting. The symbolised time becomes in its appearance more of a standstill. It is unclear if the yellow half circle will rise into the orange surface or if it will plunge into the dark blue ground. As a spectator of this scenery, one is always left with uncertainty of contingency trapped in a standstill, an imaginative timeless moment. This very moment, where the passing of time becomes invalid is probably the closest we can experience a now. A now that is eternally stretched within a continuous timeline and only accessible through one’s inner experience of time. Like the always retrievable image of a bright dot which occurs by pressing the palms onto your closed eyelids. We carry this image within us, not as a memory, but more as a possibility. Within this created scenery, another element is prominently present. An oversized radiant stop sign is towering in the middle of the space. This stop sign is already clearly visible from the outside of Keramikos Street. Like insects attracted by the city lights, the red shiny glow of the stop sign has a similar effect and draws one into the scenery of the exhibition. This effect though works completely against the logic and meaning of this particular urban symbol itself. Out of trained knowledge and agreed code of conduct this particular sign clearly urges one to stop and to halt, but in this form, it almost works like an entering point, an invitation. Though the attraction of this entering point is not only provided by the red shiny glow, it is more the unfamiliar aspect of a known symbol that leaves one curious to step further into the scenery. The uncanny aspect of this particular stop sign is that the edge is hemmed with bite marks. There is something utterly brave and beautiful in the act of plunging one´s teeth into something unknown. It somehow reminds me of sharks, when they curiously bite a chunk out of their prey to see if it is eatable.
Performance by Macklin Kowal and Alex Romania