Commuting Time
2023
Performance, Video
49 min. 27 sec.
Commuting Time, or Cum Tempore, C.T., is a performative work that takes place simultaneously in two galleries. Throughout the month of November, a conversation between two people is videotaped in thirty takes, using the cinematographic device of the shot-reverse-shot. The peculiarity of this recording is that each take is made in two different cities, Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela, 24 hours apart. The artist is always in the middle of the shot, taking part in the conversation, which forces him to physically travel between these two cities every day, a train journey of around 13 hours, covering a distance of 900 kilometres.
In other words, while the visitor is looking at this work in the Trinta/ethall gallery, the artist is almost certainly either approaching or moving away from him.
This is an essentially technical operation, a highly artificial experience. For the artist it requires preparation and a state of mind similar to that of a space voyage, in terms of the length of the journey, the objectives of the mission, the physical and psychological conditions of the participants: How to maintain a balanced diet or a good physical condition in these conditions of weightlessness, what experiments to carry out during the journey, how to develop the extra-vehicular activities, from the train to the gallery and the hotel, from the hotel back to the train in the morning, how to manage the recording tasks in the two space stations, in Barcelona and in Santiago, how to adjust all the parameters at the same time, and how to make the recordings in the two space stations, in Barcelona and in Santiago? It is necessary to fine-tune all the parameters at the same time, to coordinate the actors and the technicians, between them and with the artist: total submission to the mechanisms and their times, a great effort of management and synchronicity, passive and active.
And all in all, what for? The intention, expressed with determination in words and deeds, is that the resulting video should be indistinguishable from the one that would be obtained by filming all the shots in the same room and in a single afternoon. It is an objective that can be described as absurd by many criteria. Will the conversation be more intense because of this hidden clause?
Even if it makes no difference to the spectator, the work will undoubtedly have an effect on the artist, because of this repeated illogical waste of time, money, energy, because of this exhaustive series of insignificant acts. His life this month becomes a realisation that only to the extent that time is destroyed, personal time, the time he has left to live, art and life – art and death – become equivalent.
A publication released on the opening that contains a small diary of the travel
pdf Spanish
pdf English
Credits
Written and directed by Manuel Saiz
Shot by Juande Jarillo and Roi Rivera
Actors: Robert Cambrinus and Bill Nash
Recorded at etHALL and Galería Trinta
Please write for a preview link.
