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“ Through all
the changes ‘something’ remains – that something is the moment…no
sociological or historical determination can adequately define this
temporality…its wish is to reinstate discontinuity, grasping it in the very
fabric of the lived.1”
The Momental is a neologism, which was coined when going about the
arduous task of preparing a personal statement of artistic work. The hybrid
term (between the Moment and the Monumental) came about when describing an
interface between a highly subjectivized temporal interval (the moment) and
its’ subsequent perception as a phenomenological, albeit fleeting, ‘monument’
of sorts. When one experiences a Moment, time is stalled, alluding to the
variability of time itself, shifting our mundane experience of mechanical
time into a an unmeasurable realm, where duration itself is malleable.
The grandiose monument, which freezes an event into a legible form for
collective gaze, fails to resonate with our daily situations. Our everyday
experiences, on the other hand, refuse a universal and enduring expression,
residing rather in the fluctuating imbroglio of anonymous and co-present temporalities.
The inherent tension between the everyday and the monument is echoed in the
paradox of the moment itself – of standing out from the continuum of duration
and wanting to endure, yet it cannot – of disappearing, yet making itself
felt. This extended present of a moment ruptures linear clock-time, and can
be seen as a personalized revolution2
against the colonization of the everyday , jarring us out of the homogenizing
daze of routine.
The percolation of duration by moments, maps out a terrain of emergent
possibility against the rather muddled ambiguity of everyday triviality. The
grey arena of the banal obscures it from concentrated study, remaining at a
distance, estranged due to its familiarity. How can this mundane terrain be
re-negotiated in order to subvert our liberal, individualistic neutrality?
How can a politics of distraction, or the glance co-exist alongside the gaze
of the monumental or catastrophic? Where are the monuments for those fleeting
fragments of time when you catch a strangers’ eye in the underground and
share a silent, yet intimate mutual understanding?
The repositioning of these initial thoughts behind ‘The Momental’ into a
curatorial endeavour, seeks to flip these ideas out by inviting others to
intervene upon the terrain – to intersect theory with practice so to speak
and operate via encounters. The broad reaching nature of the question, which
is largely responsive to Lefebvre’s unrealized dream of a Science of Moments,
necessitates an equally diverse programme of activities. The gallery space is
therefore situated as an evolving hub, encompassing an exhibition, a
discussion series and street-level workshops. The residues of participatory
activities will be folded back into the exhibition itself, coupling the
existent works with pedagogical remains. Like the inducing of a Moment
itself, the platform can been seen as a composition of gestures which are
collected in space and yet permeate beyond the walls of the gallery,
instigating reverberation.
The diverse collection of works and events operate as experiments in
dis-alienation. Strictly speaking these are not performance works, although
they embody a performative modus operandi at their core. They seek to
instigate responsive situations for their receivers by giving voice to silent
codes of common behaviour3
through the distractive mechanisms in the environment of the everyday. From
an anonymous gift, to the audibility of a stranger to the penetration of time
itself into its smallest components – the works dwell in the infra-ordinary,
yet subtly twist its numbed course, skewing the habitual beyond habit. As
gestures of encounter, the works collectively induce an engagement with the
co-present, be it with others and/or the surroundings; they seek to re-write
co-habitative rituals from the inside - the lived. The works deliberately
stall the ethics of circulation4,
preferring rather to delicately and partially obstruct the negligent flow of
efficiency, opening up a space where other relational narratives can find a
temporary abode.
The performative quality of the works/events parallel the happenstance
situations within which they thrive, operating through exposure and its’
inherent risks, they seek to forge a form of knowing from the other side,
away from reductionism. Like the indeterminacy of the moment itself, these
forms of knowing refute a purely rationalist definition, residing rather in
the excessive interstices between the proverbial map and the territory,
between the read and the spoken. This alternative grammar of the everyday
percolates through our coherent surroundings, producing novel choreographies
of the quotidian - where lived time re-enters the stage and reveals the
poetic potentiality inherent to the theatre of the trivial – The Momental
being its bit-part actor.
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1.
Lefebvre, Henri. Critique of Everyday Life Volume II, p. 342. Paris: L’arche
2e edition, 1958 [1947]; translated by John Moore. London: Verso, 1991.
2. Debord, Guy La Société du Spectacle. Paris:
Buchet/Castel, 1967. Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1992.
3. DeCerteau. The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 13. Los
Angeles: University of California Press; translated by Steven Rendell, 1984.
4. Sennett, Richard. Flesh and Stone, pgs 255-270. New
York: Norton, 1994.
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Pia
Fuchs (dt. ID v. Patricia Reed) (b. 1977, Ottawa, Canada) Received her BFA at Concordia
University, Montreal in 1999. Since then she has participated in the research
and residency programmes at The Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu, Japan
(2001-02), The Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art Prague, Czech
Republic (2003) and was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart,
Germany (2003-4 & 2005). In 2001 she commenced her ongoing
Plurinaming/Polyphony project in which she acquires indigenous names
pertaining to residence and/or exhibition sites and uses them as a by-product
of exhibition activities. Currently she is working on a diverse body of work
under the umbrella title of Estranged Proximities, incorporating video,
performance, text and photography. Recent exhibitions include: “Polyrhythmy”
(solo), Akademie Schloss Solitude 2005, Stuttgart; “The Peninsula”, Singapore
History Museum 2006; “The Cult of Speed”, Toronto Free Gallery 2006 and
“Pedestrian” (duo show), West Germany 2006, Berlin. She lives and works in
Berlin.
Special thanks for support, tips and tricks from:
Erik Bünger, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Lise Nellemann & Martin Tröndle
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