By Tevž Logar
Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.
Jorge Luis Borges
While Moderna galerija established the U3 Triennial of Contemporary Slovenian Art with the aim of providing an overview of selected artistic practices through the subjective view of a selected curator every three years, the past editions of the triennial have made it apparent that it also needs to become an active space that necessarily broaches current issues of the contemporary art system regarding artistic production, art theory, criticism and reflection, art education, the art market, the distribution of artworks, and communication with professional audiences and the general public. Against the Stream of Time therefore brings together the curator’s subjective view and an analytical approach to the issues of the contemporary art system, offering an opportunity for a more comprehensive view of the Slovenian art scene. Rather than focusing exclusively on the presentation of artistic practices that directly communicate with current issues in contemporary art, the exhibition project centers on detecting the problems faced by the Slovenian art scene. In a way, this also makes it possible to try and address the challenges that individuals working in the field of contemporary art encounter in the realization of their projects. For this reason, this exhibition project needs to be read in two ways, since it approaches contemporary art and its context both in terms of subject matter and structurally.
The first way of reading this exhibition includes understanding it as a central art event, a thematically conceived show with an array of accompanying events and programs. This perspective allows visitors to experience artworks created over the last five years and understand them as a symbolic view of our society and moments anyone can identify with. Such an approach makes it possible to become aware of and focus on topics that may have been overlooked in the fast pace of everyday life and the apathy or disinterest this brings. While indeed presenting an overview of artworks in relation to the Slovenian art scene, the exhibition is, more importantly, a direct reflection of our time, which, however, should not be understood as having a linear structure, but instead as a complex cyclical entity, as something Jorge Luis Borges dwells on in many of his stories presenting time as nonlinear, cyclical or changeable, undermining the usual concepts of the past, present, and future. His protagonists often find themselves trapped in endless loops or experience moments of time out of sequence. Borges’ exploration of these topics reflects his enthusiasm for the philosophical consequences of time and his attitude to human perception and experience. This is most directly apparent in his essay “A New Refutation of Time,” where his profound reflections on time include doubts concerning the notion that time flows from the past to the future via the present. Borges’ unremitting struggle or effort to reconcile the refutation of time and the recognition of its reality is also the field opened up by this exhibition, which attempts to define time through various topical issues of everyday life, such as biopolitics, the environment, migrations, technology, memory, violence, and their interrelations, and, last but not least, the interventions of individuals who can directly question the established mechanisms of the dominant paradigms in intense social exchanges with like-minded others, and in this way co-create the complex paths of time itself. The relationships arising between individual artworks are one of the main ways in which this exhibition project tries to avoid the dominance of prevailing meta-discourses, instead focusing mainly on questioning the values of modern society through artworks. For this reason, the relationality of the project is crucial: establishing the exhibition as a social space devoid of walls dividing the artworks, the space, and the audience. However, such a social space is, importantly, not meant merely in terms of engaged social practices that attempt to intervene in actual social and political spaces, but in the broader Brechtian understanding of a social space as that which enables the viewers to see the world as it is. Against the Stream of Time involves the viewers in the choreography of the multilayered meanings of various artistic artefacts, gestures, and reflections that are defined by social mechanisms as those that have the potential of triggering an experience in viewers. And precisely because our experiences are often “conditioned” by predetermined conceptual, personal, economic, political, aesthetic or cultural parameters, the exhibition aims to provide a brief respite of resistance and create circumstances for individuals’ fruitful dissent in the process of critical observation by including different generations of artists and different media of expression, and not organizing them in strictly defined themed groups.
Complementing critical observation, the second way of reading centers on the exhibition project’s structural elements, conceptual premises and strategies. This approach encourages thinking about how the exhibition constructs meaning, how it uses space, how it connects with other events and institutions, and how it affects the public perception and understanding of contemporary art. This can help identify the patterns, trends, and challenges of art distribution, and enable better planning and strategies for future projects. The distribution of artworks usually involves various strategies and modes with the goal of adapting to the time, space, and specific circumstances of a certain art production. Every distribution strategy seeks to put an artwork in a relevant contemporary art context in order to present it in such a way that best conveys its message and value to the target audience. Thus, it does not only focus on solving the challenges or problems of the moment, but also tries to understand and identify potential changes and innovative approaches that could improve the efficiency, accessibility, and impact of the distribution of artworks. In cultural policy discourse, the geographical space addressed by the U3 triennial is frequently an abstract construction, which means that the long-term support mechanisms for art are based on a relativistic understanding of the cultural context and the specific needs of the artistic community. It is consequently necessary to recognize that the relationship between art and its distribution is constantly changing and evolving depending on socio-historical circumstances and cultural trends, and then try to adapt to this. Yet this is not the case in practice, since all too often distribution mechanisms continue to rely on traditional models that may no longer be adequate or effective in the world of today. The matter is all the more urgent at a time when public institutions in the region are struggling daily with continual reductions in public funding, which makes it imperative to consider new possibilities and models of cooperation. Taking steps towards re-establishing a community and forging bonds thus seems to be the basis for further progress, returning symbolically to what Viktor Misiano talks about in his seminal text “The Institutionalization of Friendship,” where he defines a community as the most non-institutional and personalized type of social communication that is not established through formalized procedures, but through the rhythm discovered by the participants as they listen to one another. In addition to Misiano’s words we should also consider the thoughts of his friend and Moderna galerija’s longtime curator Igor Zabel about the exhibition strategies in the 1990s – namely that every exhibition is a global concept, a sensible collection of procedures and approaches aimed at ensuring that the work will be seen in the right light by the right viewer in the right manner –, making it clear that the structural segment of our project aspires to show that the individual parts of the system are not some detached abstract entities, but rather something that also implies their strategic relation to the artwork. In the context of Against the Stream of Time, this structural segment is completely obscured from the viewers’ gaze at first glance, hiding somewhere in the “backstage” of the project, but nonetheless recognizable in the following elements: the international committee of the triennial, the devising of a network of national and regional partner organizations, the creation of online portfolios for participating artists, and arranged visits of international institutions.
By bringing together these two ways of reading, the exhibition project allows visitors to gain a broad and in-depth understanding of art and its impact on society. This makes the project a place of dialogue, reflection, and connections between art and the public. While structural possibilities and curatorial approaches can provide a context for the presentation of art, they need to be designed in such a way as to support and emphasize artistic production, and not become predominant. Crucially, a balance between the structural aspects of the exhibition and the artworks must be found in order to allow visitors to enjoy a truly authentic experience of art. Not so much because of the traditional view of an exhibition as a medium of communication, but above all because this exhibition does not aim to be a linear chronological narrative creating a choreography between detached units of content, but instead presents artistic positions that speak, through various methods of artistic practices, about personal, cultural, religious, historical, ecological, and geo-political contexts, that create many unexpected interactions by affecting one another under various conditions, and that consistently question the values of our time through all of this. This points to the fact that this exhibition does not want to be a foreign body in the thirty year-long narrative of the triennial, but rather aspires to broach relevant and topical issues reflected in the tense and dynamic relationships among images, drawings, objects, sounds, performances, community projects, moving images, interventions in public space and the viewers. Like time, an artwork is always a special way of getting to know oneself and one’s environment, which is reflected in the various phenomena that surround us. And since Borges’ turbulent thoughts about time served to introduce the exhibition, it is appropriate that they should also end this text. Throughout “A New Refutation of Time” Borges intensifies his allusions to the transience and relational nature of objects in time and expands on his arguments against the flow of time and against the existence of things in time. And when it seems that in his tireless refutation of time he has created a snare for himself from which escape is practically impossible, i.e., that it is about to become irrefutably obvious that a reconciliation between the refutation of time and the recognition of its reality is impossible, there is a turn in the concluding note of the essay. In it, we find Borges’ interpretation of a debate between the king of the Bactrians, Menander, and the monk Nagasena in the text Milinda Panha, which centers on the idea of relativity and the relational nature of the existence of things through time. Nagasena points out that names are not essential for the identification of objects, since they are but conventions decided on by human thought. Taking the example of a king’s chariot that Nagasena employs to illustrate his point, Borges carries on his reflections on the subjectivity and relativity of existence, saying that man is not defined by matter, form, ideas or consciousness. Instead, man exists in his relations and interactions with his environment, other people, and things. This means that all entities, including time, are defined merely by their interrelationships and context. Borges’ analogy thus stresses the idea that our perception of time and existence is subjective and dependent on our relationships, experiences, and interactions. Our understanding of time depends on our capability for perceiving and understanding it in the context of other entities and events. This view of time and existence emphasizes the relativity and complexity of our human experience, encouraging us to think about the nature of our existence and our relationship with the environment. Borges’ reflections on time are truly complex and philosophical, inviting readers to explore the depths of the existence of time and think about the various possibilities of understanding it. Like Borges in many of his stories, this exhibition tries to create a narrative structure that opens up several pathways through time and offers a variety of outcomes. The idea of multiple time paths intertwining and leading to different outcomes reflects the complexity of the human experience of time. It inspires us to think about the idea that our actions affect the ramifications of the flow of time and the interrelations between the past, present, and future. At the same time, it is also a reminder that time is complex and that its paths can intertwine in unpredictable ways. Borges’ intricate reflections about going “against the stream of time” bid us to explore its secrets and convolutions, and encourage us to reflect on the nature of human existence.