#guccione

Photography by Antonio

Intro

A temporal event can never be fully positioned in the present, since meanwhile it unfolds it becomes past and simultaneously anticipates the future. It is the structure of the event itself, which does not succumb to the rules of time understood as a linear chronology. The structure of the event, analysed by Jacques Derrida in terms of a necessary spacing/tracing of time opens towards a logical co-implication of space and time. Otherwise put, every temporal event ceases as it comes to be and therefore it must be inscribed as a trace in order to be at all. Derrida refers here to the becoming-space of time. I creatively deal in the underlying scene with time and its tempo-spatial tracing, seen under the light of memory as a perpetually self-actualising event.

Perpetual present

There physical space in which the underlying scene unfolds is marked by two core elements: the car (‘ape’ brand, the traditional Sicilian vehicle) and the donkey (passing behind the vehicle, as he is being held with a halter by a man across the street). Yet these elements are not just objects but ‘traces’ of a passing through (this physical space) connections between past and future, the old (donkey) and the new (ape vehicle model), the actual and the potential, in which the ‘now’ is perpetually actualised. Inside this scene, the becoming space of time materializes gradually, rendering memory a vivid recollection of a perpetually actualising present.

Exploration of perpetual present

The spatial dimension of time raises questions regarding the nature of the ‘now’ and the inscription of the trace. According to Derrida, there is no ‘now’ in the pure sense of linear time but only a ‘now’ that continuously actualizes space. In this process of becoming, the ‘now’ is self-negating (the moment is negated at the same time as it comes to be) and dependent on the spatial inscription of time. Another perspective of time, not based on the concept of ‘now’ would only consider the temporal dimension of the structure of the trace and therefore draw only the dynamic movement that is present in itself. We would find ourselves before a ‘succession’ of moments without ‘differentiation’ (undifferentiated spatial dimension). Through the extraction and overlaying of the single frames composing the scene, I look at time as a dynamic movement that is present in itself, where the moment is affirmed and established at the same time it comes into being.  

Notes