Time and Existence: How Artists Try to Grasp the Ineffable

While we were going for walks to Martin Heidegger’s hut in the Black Forrest, fellow time researcher and psychologist Julia Mossbridge reminded me of the artist Kathy Paterson’s artwork task Upcoming Library. Having planted 1,000 trees in close proximity to the Norwegian money of Oslo in the calendar year 2014, these trees will be minimize in 2114 to be applied as paper for 100 chapters of an anthology of guides that from 2014 onwards, yr by yr, is remaining composed by picked writers and saved absent right until the yr of the e-book creation. Some of the long term writers are not however born, and in 2114 Kathy Paterson will be useless. The 100 yrs are of a magnitude that is just past the likely daily life span of (even young) adults who witnessed the get started of the undertaking. In 2114, some individuals will have been born prior to 2014 and only a handful of folks on the planet could possibly have heard about the venture in 2014. For the artist, this project is a way of measuring her life time and greedy mortality. Very a fitting subject on our way to the hut of Martin Heidegger, the thinker who wrote about time and existence: we must face our finitude and mortality and by means of this realization lead a more authentic and meaningful lifetime, he demanded.

Kathy Paterson’s art is about grasping life’s length. The Greek phrase chronos handles this part of time, the chronology and—for us humans—the expiration of time. A different aspect of time is coated by the Greek term kairos, which denotes the “ideal second,” the value of now. This facet of time is experienced painfully, when we missed the one particular possibility that will not repeat alone. Functions unfold across time and the minute is irrevocably gone. A single could argue from an existential level of perspective that the two aspects of time go hand in hand. Only the awareness of the finitude of everyday living enables us to savor the minute. Just about every minute is unique, as it vanishes the up coming instant. In an before Psychology These days write-up, I have penned about the issue regarding “how extended is now?“

Seize the day: the Japanese artist On Kawara in his Today Sequence painted the date of every working day on canvas. In his collection postcards, Kawara wrote postcards to pals all-around the earth, stamping them with the correct day, indicating the specific handle where by he wrote them and the time when he bought up from mattress. Each working day thus results in being unique as portion of the artwork task which was the daily life of On Kawara. Beforehand, I have penned in a Psychology Today submit about an concept stemming from biology: that our self is additional a method than a detail. Our character of being is transitory and not secure. To develop previous and die is what we have to face. Biology meets Heidegger. We can understand to accept our nature, our daily life (chronos) passing moment by minute (kairos). This learning is epitomized by artist Roman Opalka, who from 1965 to his death in 2011 painted figures on canvas, getting started off with just one and (his) ending with 5,607,249.

A individual report at the end of this write-up. In mid-1999, my friend Dirk Thiel and I resolved to develop into the last two people of the 20^th century. We had go through that people were traveling to New Zeeland or even Tonga to be amid the initially to welcome the coming millennium. In a in shape of euphoria in a Munich bar, we claimed that we wished to be the past men and women of the 20^th century. This fitted our personalized perception of currently being the past in so a lot of areas of daily life … Seeking at maps and the globe, we discovered the Pacific Islands of Samoa to be closest to the day line and the final place on land the place one particular can rejoice New Year’s Eve. We study about folks, who with their boats traversed the date line to take pleasure in two New Year’s Eves. But we had been on land. The most western suggestion of the island of Savaii.

Our plan was to grow to be our convert of the millennium. In addition, as an artist, Dirk painted the last image of the millennium on the beaches of Samoa all through the previous times of 1999 exactly where we put in the evenings in fales, easy beach huts. On Dec. 31, we went to the most Western idea of the island of Savaii, cape Mulinuu, wherever 1 2nd right before midnight Dirk signed the last artwork get the job done of the 2^nd millennium.

Our life and its finitude are genuine. The measurement of time with clocks and calendars is to some extent a convention. Dirk Thiel, my close friend from our faculty days and the artist of the last painting of the 2^nd millennium, died final year. In 2011, Samoa altered its time frame and shifted from the western to the japanese side of the global day line. Now, Samoans can celebrate the New Calendar year as the 1st persons on the world.

In memory of Dirk Thiel (1967–2022).