Image my own
In researching Ursula Von Rydingsvard for my research paper - I've come across a some ideas and material that connects with my practice - I'm curious about time, how it is perceived, approached and explored by the artist. Process is a key part of my practice and I see often that this relates to ideas of time and history. The layering of materials, techniques and processes. Building up and breaking down.
“Levi Strauss remarked on the laborious working process of layer-by-layer marking, sawing, and grinding, noting that “at each stage of the process, hundreds and thousands of marks were inscribedon the mass with pencil, saw, grinder and a variety of hand tools, adding up to a wearing down.” This ”adding up to a wearing down” Levi Strauss saw as “the back and forth of actual time, the time taken to mean it” and he added”
“Though this sculptor does not practice mimesis (her
humility precludes it), these human inscriptions
of eventfulness are echoed in the formation of tidepools, tree stumps,and river beds - minute quotidian world formative acts.
Thousands of marks made consciously,
leavened with kind cutsand crual, then leaded
down, blackened to absorb the light. A topology of
chambered need. An apparition of the dark.”The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P 46 The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P 46
Also:
”Positioning her sculptures at the midpoint between metaphor and concreteness, she deliberately multiplies narrative possibilities through a va-et-vient of memory and action.” The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P89
And:
“Time puts all back into equalibrium, which is more in keeping with natural laws. I would like my work to be as though time acted upon it---avery long time.” UVR from her journal - (taken from The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard) p 82
Basic to her technique- which she surely developed in answer to a deep and indefinable need - is the element of repetition, the implicit statement that there are situations in life that have no beginning and no end. The arts in human history are threaded through with the impulse to escape calendar time (surely the basis of Islamic art), and many of von Rydingsvards routines suggest her need to enter the timeless universe of mythology. In casual remarks she has revealed her deep respect for ritual - the repetition of eternal gestures, always the same, in orderer to propriate the gods who themselves are always the same.” The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard p 60
To Ponder:
Time is variable and I don’t believe it can be considered constant, even atomic clocks cans show variance when subject to different gravities.
In addition the Ethiopian calendar and Persian calendar both differsto the Gregorian calendar commonly used by the west, what does this mean a global and then universal understanding of time? The Gregorian calendar cannot be the standard by which everything is measured.
By recycling and repurposing material like wood it’s age becomes multiple, the initial growth of the wood will have been progressively accumulated (demonstrated by the rings), then there will be the first intervention where it is constructed into an item - a chest of draws or scaffold plank, then the 2nd visitation rePlacing, rePurposing and refashioning where it can be made into another item, and then decomposition. Which age applies then tot he item and by what/who’s calendar? This relates again to Derrida and Spectres and time being ‘out of joint’