For the four weeks of Time's Arrow's installation at the JAG, the show has been changing on a weekly basis according to a regimented program prescribed by Rodan Kane Hart's art new artwork for the show, Developments of Space. Rodan responded to the artists' brief with a work that would force weekly curatorial changes in the largest room of the exhibition by means of a moving line that causes a displacement of artworks as it gains ground in the room. The movement of this line is marked in the space with white insulation tape, and the displacing line moves two metres along the length of the wall every Monday. In place of the displaced works, photographer Mikasa Sonnenberg is displaying photographs I have decided to respond to Rodan's work by removing other works each week, rather than moving and rehanging them as the line approaches. made this decision because I felt it would be more interesting to highlight how duration on a gallery wall carries with it an implicit value ascription. I have found this disciplined programme of removal difficult precisely because certain sequences of works that I felt were strong or that were popular with viewers had to be removed relatively early in the exhibition. The removal of William Kentridge's video Mine, particularly, made some people very grumpy. Picking a bit of vinyl text off the wall letter by letter - a citation from Jacques Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind of which I am very fond - was almost heartbreaking. So far the line has spared any new works made for the show, but I am quietly dreading its arrival at Thenjiwe Nkosi's Gallery paintings and Alex Dodd's installation Making Room. It is hard to break the habit of thinking that certain works deserve more wall-time than others, that preservation and endurance are signs of importance.
This is what the exhibition looks like for now:
Serge Nitegeka's Equilibrium flees the approaching line.
A view of the northern-most end of the exhibition. On the left wall is Murray Kruger's Archiving Absence, text excerpts from a series of interviews with JAG librarian Jo Burger which will later be incorporated into a video documentary.
The three changes the exhibition has undergone so far have established the process of regular modification in the exhibition, and from now until the end of the month, while the regimented movement of Rodan's work will continue, other changes will be made in response to the exhibition's own progress, its public reception and curatorial difficulties, mistakes and successes. Regular updates and warnings of these changes will be posted on this blog from now on.
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