“Diachronic-Pool” (2013)

“Diachronic-Pool” is the title of a new work. This work consists in a three-dimensional Collage, a space in which I give Form to two confronting logics: Diachrony and Synchrony. The pasting together of Diachrony and Synchrony in the same space is what makes the Collage. The logic of Diachrony is the logic of anticipation and sequential satisfaction. Diachrony – in order to be in contact, to be in the “infight” of today’s reality – confronts and is opposed to the logic of Synchrony which associates, connects all-at-once and creates a simultaneous same level organization. These two logics – Diachrony and Synchrony – will collide their opposed dynamics inside the motif of a Pool. Diachrony is Resistance. Other notions are Belief, Creation, Movement or Intensity. By applying a logic of Diachrony we can fight the tendency toward “The Personal”, Justification, Phantasms and toward the Imaginary. Diachrony resists the contemplation of reality and the attempts to resolve it. A Diachronic-vision helps keep eyes wide open in the midst of the surrounding and accelerating reality.

A Pool – a swimming pool as such – is an image explaining the logic of Synchrony, picturing the horizontality of the waterline with people swimming and floating objects or people climbing into the objects, on the same level. The Pool is the visual expression of this all-at-once logic of Synchrony. It also recalls other kinds of pools, the dark-pool or the money-pool, or the journalist-pool.

One of the motifs in “Diachronic-Pool” is the ‘Megaform’. It’s a big tube which cuts the Pool in two unequal parts and fights – in its dimensions – the size of the Pool. The ‘Megaform’ stands for another measure, another dimension, it forces the audience to change viewing angles, to go around it and to understand it as an obstacle. The ‘Megaform’ is indeed an element which holds its own logic – neither Diachronic nor Synchronic. It’s an element which stands for spatial orientation because it is based on gravity. The logic of gravity struggles with the organization and the meaning of Diachrony and Synchrony, in the same space – since the ‘Megaform’ is itself a part of the Pool. It’s an “integrated” part that cannot be removed or worked-out, it’s an imposed part which imposes its own logic and as such, it has to be incorporated in the whole. There is no possibility to remove it, we have to live with it, the ‘Megaform’ has to be incorporated, it has to be overgrown.

In my work “Diachronic-Pool” I integrated Tires as a new material. Tires, old and used, are a common, poor, universal material with no specific artistic “plus-value” and as such it meets the other materials I use for my work. Commonly, when we are refering to “Tires”, we are talking about the old used ones. Tires stand for the leftovers of thousands, even millions, of miles, drives or journeys accomplished. Tires stand as leftovers of millions of movements. Tires is a material which is bulky when no longer in use, a material that can only find a second life in a precarious usage, as harbor protections, as delimitation on a kart circuit, as ballast for any kind of attachment to the ground as in farm yards or fields. I love this variety of precarious second life-use. Therefore, tires can also be used for Sculpture. The first time I used tires in my work was in “Crystal of Resistance” but they were covered with aluminum-foil. It won’t be the case here, and it won’t be the last time I will use this material.

We are – whether we want it or not – living in the “i-time”. The “i” stands for “intelligent”, as “i-pad”, “i-phone”, “i-watch”, “i-technology”. It’s not the owner or the user of this technology who is intelligent, it’s not the human being – “intelligent” refers to the technology itself, the material, the product, the thing to consume, which means that one can buy the “i”, and therefore one can buy intelligence. The “i-time” stands for immediacy, an immediacy which is unreasoned. The unreasoned, as such, can be interesting if I am aware of its irrationality and if I am aware that “immediate” is “fake”.

Flat-screens, i-pads and i-phones, tv-screens are getting flatter and flatter. This flatness – a technical progress in itself – is the equivalent of the “light” (as in “light-Coke”). Not “heavy” and not “voluminous”, those are the guidelines giving us the illusion of easiness, lightness and thinness of the world’s reality which is, on the contrary, more and more chaotic, more and more complex and more and more incommensurable.

In “Diachronic-Pool” there are 5 ‘Splitter’, each ‘Splitter’ is connected to 22 LCD-screens showing repeatedly the same endless program. The LCD- or flatscreens are hanging in the Pool-space at different levels, at different heights. The different heights point out a diachronic placement, in conflict with the synchrony of their programs. The 5 ‘Splitter’ are programmed following the 5 thematic of: Economy, Culture, Politics, Aesthetics, Ecology. By challenging gravity, each of the 5 ‘Splitter’ wants to fight its synchrony logic. The ‘Splitter’ are fighting to make sense, fighting for an order, for a meaning, for a logic while being senseless, without logic, orderless and without a meaning. This is more than a contradiction, it’s the reason of the ‘Splitter’s’ existence: the ‘Splitter’ exists as such. A ‘Splitter’ needs to split and share before analyzing content. On the contrary – but also as reverse – Diachrony and Synchrony are unsplittable, Diachrony and Synchrony are ‘one’, ‘entire’ as the smallest molecule, not to divide.

The French poet Manuel Joseph wrote a text for “Diachronic-Pool” which only makes sense by its integration to the work. His contribution will be treated as an “integrated text”. This integration will be done by photocopying the text, enlarging excerpts and cutting notions and terms out of their text context. But more than writing about or around the work, the text is a ‘Chromatic Library’ with excerpts of texts by De Saussure, Hejmslev, Chomsky, Kripke and many others linguists, logicians, and writers as Friedrich Dürrenmatt, William Faulkner, William Gibson and Uwe Johnson. A new form of “library” with a new kind of classification which refuses communication, a classification risking the non-understanding – not out of confusion but as the absolute will to resist any kind of communication or connection. Communication and connection have to be deconstructed. It’s Manuel Joseph who, as a poet but – I think – also as a philosopher, asserts that ‘indignation’ can only create ‘resignation’ – therefore ‘indignation’ is not an active term.

I understand the acceleration of connections, which has developed during these very last

years, as an obligation to conform to a sharp and exploding importance of “being connected”. There is a growing pressure upon those not yet connected, to get connected. There is – and this is new and devastating – the suspicion that whoever isn’t connected is potentially an a-social person. The social-medias understand and contribute to this pressure, they want us to use “the social“, and they want us to consume “the social“- this is pure alienation. So perhaps, could the act of remaining non-connected – even for a certain time – become an act of resistance? To resist all the seductive invitations to connect, to be and remain connected at all times. To resist the consumption of “being connected”. To resist the temptation to become a consumer of connections. Not be a consumer.

“Diachronic-Pool” is an artwork and as such it asserts its Autonomy. Autonomy gives the artwork beauty and absoluteness. This is what “Diachronic-Pool” wants to reach – but also, it wants to be a Tool or a Weapon. Because Art is the tool or weapon – one of the very rare – that can disconnect today’s human being from their connected dependency. Art can – because it’s Art – cut the human being’s connection to his computer, to his “i-pad”, “i-phone”, “i-watch”, “twitter-account” and to his “facebook-profile”. Art strips and cuts connections with this “media-reality” producing opinion, comments and facts. Art can mobilize an audience – a non-exclusive audience – this is my belief. In order to mobilize Art has to face Reality, Art has to struggle with its outcome and has to touch the contemporaneous “desire” to be connected. Not by giving it credit, joining or supporting it – but by challenging its issues: the issue to stand in the reality of the world as an emancipated and sovereign subject. Art – because it’s Art – can establish a confrontation or a dialogue from one to one. This means Art possesses the power to convince one person – one by one – and when Art achieves this, this means that the revolution is continuing.

Thomas Hirschhorn, January, 2013