Dr. Josef Spiegel
in: "Latent History",
Catalogue Sculpture Biennale Münsterland 2005 - Borken District

"Tomorrow never knows" – some comments on the five-year intervention "today" by Christian Hasucha

Christian Hasucha's contribution to the Skulpturbiennale Münsterland consists of four differently weighted but directly related parts. The core piece consists of five oversized concrete letters. They are up to three meters high and form the material substrate of the work (the significant). On the level of meaning, they form the word "today" with all its diverse connotations (the signifier).
Secondly, a specific indication of location provided by the artist localizes the work on an ordinary cattle pasture, which is located in the immediate vicinity of a busy country road, especially one heavily frequented by commuters. The road connects the two districts of the municipality of Velen (Velen and Ramsdorf).
Thirdly, the artist set a strict time limit of exactly five years for the duration of the lettering. After this period, the actual sculpture is to be dismantled and its individual elements destroyed.
The fourth and final component of the work is a kind of reception instruction in which the artist asks the bus drivers traveling on this section of the route not to reduce their speed when passing the work.
Hasucha describes his work as "a five-year intervention". It could also be described as a "sculptural event" without depriving people of their senses. After all, one of its main characteristics is its dynamism. In addition, its various components in the form of material specification, perception and effect form such an inseparable connection that, strictly speaking, only an extended concept of sculpture can be applied to Hasucha's work. Among other things, this has consequences for the documentation and interpretation of the work. According to the thesis, although it can be experienced directly, it can hardly be conveyed without loss.

For example, conventional forms of depiction such as photographs, which always contain moments of the static, are hardly suitable for capturing the dynamic nature of the work "today" with sufficient precision. At best, they can indicate the direction of a possible reception.
But even the interpreter is suddenly made aware of the limits of his attempt to conceptualize "today". For a reliable interpretation, which inevitably requires at least an appropriate reception, is virtually impossible at this point in time. After all, three conditions must be fulfilled before the work can be experienced in its full effect: Firstly, it can only be optimally perceived from the speed of a passing means of transportation. Secondly, this form of perception must be repeated, preferably at the same time every day and ideally over a period of five years. Thirdly, after the actual sculpture has been dismantled, the recipient should be able to allow the mental after-effects of the impressions gained, for example in the form of after-images or after-narratives. An interpretation in advance is therefore inevitably speculative and can largely only be made in the subjunctive.

In terms of content, Hasucha's work is initially aimed at the great field of experience of time in general. In doing so, he takes up a central theme of modernity, as it has been dealt with again and again in the tradition of Marcel Proust in literature ("In Search of Lost Time"), Henri Bergson in philosophy ("The Theory of Duration") or Norbert Elias in cultural history ("On Time"), to name just a few really important drafts, with a wide variety of questions and results.

With the sculptural event "today", however, the concept of time is not defined abstractly or absolutely, but rather located and situated in a relational structure of movement and space. The simple formula "time equals speed times distance" expresses in a shortened form the implied dependence of the coordinates mentioned. Alongside time, the space perceived through movement is therefore another important subject of his work. The artist concretizes it in the idea of landscape. In relation to the outer frame and the airy integration of the sculpture into its surroundings, he ultimately also formulates the concept of a perspective landscape image for the viewer. It emerges from the fusion of existing elements such as grass, shrubs, trees or sky and the newly added word "today". The latter is the guarantor that a "picture" is particularly emphasized from the many possible ones.

All passers-by will usually only be able to see the newly created, semantically enriched landscape image in blurred or fragmented form, as an undistorted full image is only possible in direct view for fractions of a second. After that, the visually perceptible image disappears again immediately. A certain blurring of perception is therefore inherent in the work. It corresponds with the feeling that it is impossible to capture the moment. The present appears as something that is constantly passing by, something that wants to be lived, but can only be experienced through retrospective reflection, i.e. by referring to what has already been. The "today" seen anew every day by commuters on the Ramsdorf - Velen route, for example, therefore appears as a metaphor for the intangible nature of the moment. It also provides a rather incidental image of the relativity of the concept of time. The "today" perceived over five years in different contexts and time windows proves to be the only and at the same time the most unstable constant. Every day, passers-by can experience anew that "yesterday" was already "today" and 'today' will be "tomorrow". Hasucha uses simple but extremely effective means to give tangible expression to the complex issue of the intertwining and interlocking of past, present and future. Paul Virilio once aptly described the close connection between time, speed and perception with the phrase "aesthetics of disappearance". The epistemological problem this raises - how to reconcile the present and reflection - is given a concrete form in the "five-year intervention". In the end, Hasucha's work even offers a cautious reference to the transience of existence as such.

The previous remarks place Hasucha's work very close to abstraction and the weight of thought, as if his work were primarily intended to initiate a philosophical discourse. However, the philosophical implications, which admittedly are almost inevitable when dealing with the subject of time, are only one aspect of his artistic intervention, albeit a significant one. It should therefore be emphasized that Hasucha's ultimate aim is not to pass on his own thoughts and views to the viewer in an instructive manner, so to speak, but rather to view and use art merely as a source of inspiration. In this sense, it serves to create space for new ways of seeing and thinking in others. His art in general and the work "heute" in particular is therefore an occasion, not an answer, and is therefore filled with inconsistencies and surprising twists and turns. In this way, narrative, ironic refraction and the viewer himself find an appropriate place in his work.

As a passenger, for example, the latter is confronted with his own lived or newly invented history by shifting the abstract concept of "time" into the apparent or actual banality of the recurring everyday situation. The work "today" acts as a field of association and an impulse. The lively lettering is just one expression of this. It revives images and thoughts of its own, associative, for example, of the news program of the same name (also written in small letters) or of the world-famous "Hollywood" advertising lettering in the middle of the landscape. At the same time, it reflexively sets an individual story of the passengers in motion, interspersed with the daily small deviations or shifts. Rather banal narrative patterns, for example about the relative uniformity of the journey, can be mixed with more far-reaching thoughts about the slipping away of life. The intervention in ingrained habits carried out through the brief but constantly repeated reception of "today" thus becomes a trigger and a projection surface for personal reflection. In the best case scenario, each passenger creates their own subjective film "Im Laufe der Zeit" (Wim Wenders) with daily continuations, breaks, external coincidences and internal overlays of personal memory fragments and private longings. In other words: The passengers combine their own hidden history into an image-sound collage. The experience of time is mixed with an experience of space and images. This happens differently in everyone's head. The possible academic discourse on transience is thus easily and playfully transformed into a quasi-narrative project. Its title could be: "Reflections of a commuter" (Hasucha).

This only comes to a temporary end in a brilliant final chord. After five years, the sculpture is removed, raising the question of where the "today" has actually gone. An answer to this, the artist hopes, is anchored in the work itself with the help of perceptual psychology. She sees five years as the period in which "wishes and goals can be best imagined, but within which memory also fades the least." (Hasucha). If science is right, the temporally limited sculpture ultimately has a mentally permanent effect. The "today", conceived as an open time-space for ideas, is implanted for the long term in the vision of an indeterminate and thus to be shaped tomorrow.

Cf. Project documentation Sculpture biennale Münsterland 2005 "today" by Christian Hasucha