Artists: Takehiro Iikawa, Lyota Yagi
Curator: Hitomi Hasegawa  
Venue: Platform China (HK)

Special Events:
Performance & lecture: Tue, October 29, 2013. 5 - 7pm
Venue: Future Cinema Studio, 
Address: Future Cinema Studio, 6F, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Center, School of Creative Media, City University Hong Kong, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

Opening reception: Thu, October 31, 2013. 6.30 – 8.30pm
Venue: Platform China (HK)
Address: Unit 601, 6/F, Chai Wan Industrial Building Phase 1, 60 Wing Tai Road, Chai Wan, Hong Kong
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm | Phone: +852 9768 8093 

What is time? Can time be compared to a line – unique, straight and continuous? Does this line have a beginning or end? What if one day things simply ground to a halt? If you froze in the middle of reading this text, raindrops froze mid-air, birds froze in the sky, everything on the planet stopped in its tracks, the entire universe completely ceased moving except for the passage of time itself? Will anyone ever experience a moment like this? 

Aristotle and Leibnitz believe that time cannot exist independently without the chain of events which make it up. Time is made up of the changes and circumstances, which it comprises, and otherwise time does not exist.

Other philosophers including Plato and Newton perceive time as an empty container into which things and events can be placed; but the container still exists independently of what (if anything) is placed in it.

American philosopher Sydney Shoemaker pursues this idea of “empty time” in a theory where he proposes a small finite world divided into three zones, namely A, B and C. People in Zone A come to a complete halt for one hour once every two years. 

While the freeze in Zone A is taking place, Zone A appears to those in Zones B and C to be pitch black, since no light can enter or exit the frozen zone. A similar event takes place in Zone B for an hour once every three years, and in Zone C, this happens for an hour once every 5 years. A global freeze occurs every 30 years. No one witnesses this global freeze, but everyone is aware it takes place. On this day, inhabitants of this strange world celebrate with “empty time parties”. 

Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘homogeneous, empty time’ is something that we consider for this exhibition. The time simply passes, similar to clock and calendar. In ‘homogeneous empty time’, one day, one moment is the same as another. It continues from the past to the future and thus it is “eternal return of the same”.

Time is something ubiquitous and connects us with history and ancient time. Time is physical, mathematical, a part of the universe, inhuman and cruel. To work with Time, you need to choose a concrete attitude. It can either be romantic, or it can be scientific, it can also be sociological, and it can be philosophical and so on. This exhibition focuses on the two perceptions of the Empty time by two artists, Lyota Yagi and Takehiro Iikawa.

The two artists have totally different approaches towards Time in their artistic practices. Yagi considers directly time-based media such as music or video. He manipulates and distorts time within music or video compositions, or uses physical media like CDs, LP records and music tapes. His series of work “CD” (2011) are created by peeling off vaporised aluminium from CD-R and sticking the pieces onto the canvas. Whatever the content used to be, the memories or the music from the CDs now exist between the fine layers of aluminium and canvas’ rainbow-like surface.

His piece “Vinyl” (2005-) is an LP record made from ice presented on a record player playing a very subtle kind of music. As time passes, the grooves of the record melt and the music fades away to become noise, while the audience enjoys an elusive and ephemeral melody. 

In the video work “Stealing Time” (2007), Iikawa challenges human perceptions of time. Having informed everyone on the team except for one player, Iikawa "steals" this player's time. The artist records the player's reaction when the Futsal match unusually finishes twice as fast as usual. We see how the human perception of time is not precise. 

In “The Clock for Practice of Time” (2006-) series, Iikawa made videos over the course of 24 hours, visually showing what time it was. His works are concerned with the relationship between people and time, nature and the urban landscape. 

Lyota Yagi (b. 1980, lives and works in Kyoto, Japan) produces artworks between the notions of "the invisible" and "the distinct existence of what we are unaware of in our day-to-day life." By reconstructing the functionalities of immaterial sound, object and words, his work provides the audience new aspects and brings them to the state of reconsideration of our sensitivities towards time and space. His works have been shown in the Yokohama Triennial 2011, Yokohama, Japan; Winter Garden, Ernst Museum, Budapest, Hungary; MOT Annual, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, amongst others. He was an Asian Cultural Council Fellow in 2010. 

Takehiro Iikawa’s (b. 1981, lives and works in Kobe, Japan) video works are always themed around the notion of physical time and challenge the perception of time within given norms. Iikawa also examines the more intimate situations within everyday life, private memories or seemingly trivial events which are important for the individual. His works have been shown in Young Video Artists Initiative, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Fade out, Fade In, Kodama Gallery, Kyoto and Tokyo; rendezvous 09, Institut d’art contemporain, Lyon, France; the Yokohama Triennial (participated as COUMA), Yokohama Japan amongst others.

Hitomi Hasegawa is a Hong Kong based curator and founded the Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art (MIACA) in 2006. Currently a PhD candidate at the City University Hong Kong, Hasegawa also works for the Setouchi Triennial 2013 and has since 2000 curated a number of exhibitions and screenings in venues including the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Istanbul Short Film Festival, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Kunstbuero in Vienna, Kulturhuset and Skulpturenshus in Stockholm.

Text by Hitomi Hasegawa
Organized by: Platform China, MIACA 
Supported by: Asahi Shimbun Foundation
City University Hong Kong, HAPS Kyoto
Thanks to: Mujintoh Production, Tokyo 
Kodama Gallery, Tokyo, Kyoto

References: 

Aristotle, Physics, in Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton University Press, 1984). Alexander, H.G. (ed. and trans.), The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Manchester University Press, 1956).
Benjamin, Walter “On the Concept of History” (1940)  Translation: © 2005 Dennis Redmond
Source; http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/Theses_on_History.html original German: Gesammelten Schriften I:2. Suhrkamp Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, 1974
Shoemaker, Sidney, “Time Without Change,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969), pp. 363-381.