You conceived a watch bracelet and a wall clock which do not give the time. What do they tell?
They tell us that our preoccupation with the measurement of time is a contradiction to what it is to be human, and for me… quite unhealthy. Humans used to live in a state of stasis, not growth. Accelerated capitalism is inescapable and harder and harder to even see. There used to be very little reason to measure time or wealth, counting was not so important… Successful ancient civilisations lived by Kairos time, not Chronos time. An understanding of time based on ‘the apt or opportune moment’; on readiness, not dictated by clocks.
"Imagine a world in which you eat when you are hungry, not when it is dinner time."
You collect watches; what interest you in these instruments measuring and scheduling the time? What space for watches in a world of screens and digital interfaces?
Strangely, I collect watches for all the currencies aside from the one that most people now associate them with: wealth. In a world in which everybody carries a smart phone, there is no functional reason to wear a watch. Watches should be redundant relics, so it is easy to now assume they are worn purely as status symbols. I love the semiotics of the watch; a clear, crisp signifier of all sorts of things, helping to build and read the personality of the owner. I love watches for their provenance, their design history; their status in a world of valuable objects; their sentimental value; but most of all, their superstition.
Your animatronic mouse surprises visitors taking the lift of the Bourse de Commerce. What is her message?
The little pip-squeak is a testament to our need to leave a trace of our passing through the world; a monument to language; the very thing that sets humans apart from animals.
"Her struggle to speak is an illustration of our need to tell stories and to be heard, even when we have no story to tell. An attention famine in a content-obese world."
Does she invite them to smile at their own condition? Is it a an admission of powerlessness from art being unable to understand and phrase?
It could be, but it could also be a million other interpretations by a million other spectators. The objective of art is not to communicate, but to provide catalytic ambiguity. If I knew what it meant, it wouldn’t be a very good artwork.
