8 Ways to Overcome Space and Time

Curators: Stefanie Böttcher and Una Popović
Organization: Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade and Künstlerhaus Bremen

Igor Eškinja / Karolina Freino / Agnieszka Kurant / Nemanja Lađić / Klara Lidén / Egill Sæbjörnsson / Fiete Stolte / Stevan Živadinović – Vane Bor

Opening:
Friday 8.11.2013, 7 p.m.
9 November – 23 December 2013

Opening hours: Wed - Mon 12.00 - 8.00 pm

Location:

Salon Muzeja savremene umetnosti
Pariska 14, 11000 Beograd
Tel/Fax: +381 (0)11 2630 940
msub@msub.org.rs
www.msub.org.rs

The German term Raum has a double meaning as “room« and “space«; it can refer both to a room (an enclosed part of a building used for a particular purpose) and to physical space as a repository for all things. So when people think of the word Raum they always associate it with its external restraints. Time, however, relates to a different given. Despite being as fleeting as space it, too, is limited, for people have positioned it within a rhythm that drives it forward relentlessly. Both parameters are all-embracing and literally “un-limited«, determining the habitat and lifespan of human beings. In return, they are measured and sub-divided to make them as tame and predictable as possible. Nevertheless, we view time and space with a mixture of reverence and impotence. As intangible and autonomous as these two elementary forces may seem, there is an equally pressing and yet perennial dream that people can elude their control.
In "The Fourth Dimension", Rudy Rucker wrote that if it were not for time, he could live for ever, and if it were not for space, he could be everywhere - thus emphasizing that space and time are diametrically opposed to absolute freedom, and implying that each has a system of rules to which we are all subject, and by which we are all oppressed. Spatiality and temporality determine the scope of what people can do and how they can behave - and it is impossible for them to circumvent this. Yet it is precisely when artists seek to overcome these aspects of reality that they can thrill us with their ingeniousness.
The group exhibition 8 Ways to Overcome Time and Space brings together diverse artistic approaches to examining space, time, and their inherent systems of rules, which can involve making the boundaries of a location visible, examining the spatial limitations of the artist;s own body, or introducing a new way of calculating time. In this show, the rules of space and time - essentially, what is possible and what is impossible - are investigated by means of sound, video, photography, and sculpture.