Temporalizing does not mean a 'succession' of the ecstasies. The future is not later than the having-been, and the having-been is not earlier than the present. Temporality temporalizes itself as a future that makes present, in the process of having- been.
-Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
Jason Haam is pleased to present Temporalizing Temporality a two-person exhibition by Peter Buggenhout and Marie Cloquet. The show will open on November 8th, 2018 and remain on view through January 14th, 2019. This will be the artists’ first exhibition in Seoul, South Korea.
The title of the exhibition comes from Martin Heidegger’s concept of temporality in Being and Time, in which time is not constituted as a linear succession. Featuring a selection of sculptures and collages, this exhibition explores the co-existence of time—the past, present, and future—within memory and questions the state of existence within an inconceivable reality.
Memories present themselves as fragmented preservations of time, but they also function as caches for the possibilities of a future (such as recalling a moment of prospective desire). It is in this way that within memory, the linear succession of time is negated and the past, present, and future co-exist within the same existential space.
Buggenhout creates sculptures comprised of abject materials such as dust and cow innards. Covered with a layer of dust, ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’ is a work series first experimented with in the 2000s. The settled dust over its complex structures resembles a lost artifact that has found its way into the present, making it difficult to place these works within the context of time. Thus, without a sense of temporal reference, Buggenhout’s works function as autonomous beings that exist beyond the constructs of linear time.
Buggenhout’s works are analogies for the way in which memory functions. Memories are moments of the past stored within the brain. Yet, the act of recalling memories requires the past to concurrently materialize within the present. In the same way, Buggenhout’s sculptures are objects of the present that appear as objects of the past. This materialization of the past within the physicality of the present negates the structure of linear time and allows viewers to simultaneously experience both a past and present—temporalizing temporality.
Cloquet photographs places of the world, which she then projects onto a wall and manually stretches and manipulates the image. After she prints these constructed images onto light-sensitive photographic paper, Cloquet often enhances her images with touches of watercolor. Similar to the way in which Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky films, Cloquet reconstructs images by way of physically deconstructing linear time, of chronology—constructing fragmented scenes of the present within the past.
The physical body of her works exists within reality, but the reconstructed image of her works exists within a new spatial dimension—a recreation of the past within an inconceivable reality, within the memory of a possible future that does not yet and never will exist. Utilizing an analogue technique of process, Cloquet adjusts a sequential abstract notion of order, as per Andrei Tarkovsky and presents a tangible occurrence of Heidegger’s concept of temporality.
Buggenhout and Cloquet create works that are wholly complete and unified within themselves. Although their existence is dependent on physicality, they do not exist within the linear succession of time. Their works exist simultaneously as tangible objects within reality and imperceptible objects within memory. Martin Heidegger describes a sense of space:
But “nowhere” does not mean nothing; rather, region in general lies therein… Therefore, what is threatening cannot come closer from a definite direction within nearness; it is already “there”—and yet nowhere. It is so near that it is oppressive and takes one’s breath—and yet it is nowhere.
