Ivica

Starting from the pace of life today and from the Benjamin Franklin’s phrase that time is money, CRANE makes this performance through which we want to put out more questions. The responsibility of the artist today? Is every work done by artist (Duchamp, Man Ray, Warhol, Jeff Koons) art? Can the time be materialized and be marked with numbers, does time has a price, can the time have shape and form, and can the time ever be art? In this performance, CRANE gives shape to time and the shape depends from the subject in which we put the fictitious time. We quantitatively mark the time and apply to it a real price – 10 min .= 10 danars, 20 min. = 20 denars, 1 h = 50 denars …. In the era of capitalism where the main feature is a private ownership, everything has its own price. So as the time, it has its price, and you can buy time.

But if time can be sold, then we ask the question is it possible time to be someone’s personal property, and if artist sells the time does that means that he/she is selling art? What are the parameters that the act of selling time should have to be art and to be different  from a regular and fair sale of pumpkin and sunflower seeds? What a work needs to have to be art? Duchamp poses this very question by setting the urinal in the gallery, Warhol presents his entire life as art, where his life and his works are inseparable, Bruce Nauman asks in his studio is everything he do art, just because he is an artist?

If we put the time in a paper bag, the time will get the shape of that paper bag, if it is in a plastic bag, the time with its fictive form will take the shape of the plastic bag. With this performance we want to materialize this concept. Time can not be touched, we can not feel it with the basic human senses, but we can feel its expiry. We are aware of  time by its indication of the time: second, hour, day, year … Roman Opalka records the time continuously, but without signs, catching those moments of his face changes with a photograph. But what if we didn’t have the term time? What if we didn’t mark the time? What if we didn’t measured it?

The Piraha tribe that lives in the rain forests in Brazil does not know the concept of time. Their language does not have nouns like time, no indications for time, no numbers, measures, clocks. For them, time is unimportant and inconceivable concept. People Piraha did not record history nor predict the future, they live in “today” and for them understandable is only the moment of action, the “now”. Who knows are Piraha people happy and how much happy they are.  How simple is to live the moment without thinking of tomorrow, deadlines, time limits, age, without history and concerns about the future?

Modern man is in constant fight with the time. He is in a rush to be in step with technological progress, he is in a hurry to be in touch with new information, in a hurry to meet goals.  And we are always in a lack of time.

We are always boasting a bit more time to complete something started, we lack time for ourselves and our family.

That is why Crane decided to sell time. Anyone can buy! You can buy time for yourself to read a book, time to drink coffee, more time to learn for exam. You can buy time and give it to someone, you can freeze it and take it out it when you needed the most. You can buy time and throw it away. Simply, you can buy time and do whatever you want with it.

Beside the performance, CRANE will also sell time by purchase. So, this is a project without an end. Anyone who is interested can purchase time and the time will arrive to his/her home address by mail. Time will be packed, depending on the size (amount) of the purchased time. Buyer’s payment will be made by payment to our bank This is meant to resemble intention of buying / selling TV offer products that are advertised as if they were exactly what we need at the moment, products that will make a happier, fulfil.

But the sale of such an unreal, fictional “subject” is Even tough the time is a term that no one may possess, we materialize it and with the sale of such an unreal, fictional “subject”, we sell it as a work of art.

Photos