Alicja Kwade

Gegen den Lauf, 2014

Alicja Kwade’s wall clock with an analog dial follows an absurd logic that is all its own: when the second-hand moves forward by one second, then the whole dial turns in the opposite direction, moving anticlockwise. Remarkably, however, one can still read the time from it; the clock is in fact showing the right time in terms of its hour hands and second hands. One could hardly fail to hear the continuous ticking of the clock hands. It disconcerts any visitor standing close to it, creating an awareness of the passage of time. Kwade gives us the clock as a time machine, one that sets the rhythm for times spaces. Among other things, it points out how absurd machine rhythms of this kind can be and how absurd our obsession with time can sometimes become. We see our second-by-second advance into the future and the forces that pull us back into the past, colliding in this single object. In this collision, the present moment is, as it were, suspended and erased. To engage with the schizophrenic factor in these antagonistic forces represents a mental stress test.