Age Quod Agis - A Sundial or The Possibility of Stopping Time

However, mapping the sun, as it moved specifically in the space at that time of the year, had to be created in the space for the duration of the show. The exhibition was in essence a 3 week performance of me arranging the optical fibers to catch the rays of the sun. The sun was shining in the space until about 3 pm and as the gallery opened at noon I spent in total about 50 hours tending to the glass.

Each optic fiber consisted of a thin glass thread. The sunlight, entering at one end of the thread, was transported at the core of the glass and visualized as a pin-point of light at the other end. This is the high-tech technology used today to transport data, at the speed of light, on our ‘information highways’. However, rather than buying industrial made optic fiber I made these by hand, using the thousand year old technology of glass blowing.

Before the exhibition opened I built a 20 foot wall, separating the gallery space into two rooms. The glass threads were installed on the floor, starting by the windows in the first room and continuing under the wall into the second room. As visitors entered the gallery they first encountered, probably surprisingly, the artist sitting on the floor by the windows, carefully moving the ends of the glass threads so that they are always positioned in the sunlight. The tiny glass threads that trailed across the gallery floor reflected the ambient daylight in the room and created the effect of a ‘river of light’.

To enter the room behind the wall visitors had to step over stones, placed among the glass, to access a door opening on the far side of the wall. If anyone stepped on the glass it broke and lost its optic ability to transport light. Carved in the stepping stones was the Latin phrase; Age Quod Agis.1 Once within the darkened room visitors was given the English translation of the Latin phrase - Do What You Do - written on the floor and illuminated by the pin-points of light at the end of the glass threads. Also illuminating the room was a video of a flowing river projected on the wall above. A bench was provided for visitors to sit in the dark and listen to the relaxing sound of a busy spring river.

However, although I know it is impossible to stop time, my intent was to try and slow it down to point where it felt as though it had stopped. I believe it’s appropriate to speak about two kinds of measure of time; clock time - as defined by science - and the personal, experienced time. Right outside the gallery doors I had pasted the following two sentences to the wall:

A second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.2

A second is the time between two heartbeats.

Blaise Pascal spoke about the human tendency for centrifuging - how we would do anything to avoid our own ‘centers’ and instead throw ourselves into a fast spinning lifestyle.3 We stay busy and avoid solitude because if we would ever stop to think, the existential thoughts that emerge may feel unbearable; the realization of the passing time, our unrelenting aging and the fact that we will sooner or later die. However, if we run around chasing time most of our lives, do we really appreciate life? Why does it take a natural disaster, a sickness, or another life threatening event to teach us to take notice of the really important things in our lives? Will it take an environmental catastrophe for us to realize the importance of the Sun?

We have all experienced the feeling of “if I don’t get this done now everything will fall apart”. However, one could, at that moment, slow down and find out that the world would wait a few minutes while we took a break. I believe it all comes down to practice; to sit down every day and do nothing for a while. With my exhibition I wanted to create a space, mentally and physically away from the busy life outside, where the wheels spun slowly. Hopefully the heart rate of my visitors slowed down and the clock that measures experienced time stopped for just a little while.

1. Do what you do”. From Roman play write Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, 205 BC
2. The definition of a second by the International Committee of Weights and Measures, 1967.
3. Pointed out by Swedish author Owe Wikström in ; Långsamhetens Lov, Stockholm Natur och Kultur, 2001, p 86.