Newton’s Archives of Time – Wärme und Licht
“How long is the moment? The moment is like the twinkling of the eye.“ (Talmud)
Under the title “Newton’s Archives of Time”, we have been pursuing a long-term project for years, a
collection of still lifes with scenes, detailed observations and experiments on the direction, duration
and speed of time. Video is the time machine that makes it possible to experience time
in its various physical, individual and social aspects:
subjective duration, objective length, acceleration or deceleration.
The video images are recorded exclusively with a still camera. The scenes are taken from
from everyday life. They show symbolic arrangements, skies and landscapes, observations of animals or work situations in real time. In their choice of motif and composition, they refer
to classical pictorial themes of painting. But while painting represents a kind of eternity,
video is a fast-moving medium. Video tapes and hard disks become obsolete and unusable after just a few outdated and unusable after just a few years.
On our extended walks through the wintry cold of Lichtenberg, we come across the Klingenberg power station. At its center stands a grandiose industrial monument from the 1920s, a clinker brick building that expresses the belief in progress of the 20th century in all its grandeur.
Today, more than 300,000 households are supplied with heat and supplied with heat and electricity. We know: We want to continue our series of still lifes here, in which we document people at work. But the mills of the administration grind slowly, we are granted access to the extensive grounds and can set up filming locations. But the time in the Lichtenberg Studios is not enough to realize the recordings. We will We will continue to pursue the project and are confident that we will be able to film in the spring. Dealing with the power plant also changes our view of the city: the visual traces of heat and light traces of heat and light are increasingly coming into focus. Like the web of a giant spider, the district heating pipes run through the district. Nature and technology meet
spray paintings. The low winter sun flashes through vistas and gaps in the concrete. At night
the lights of the apartments form vertical, slowly changing structures that merge with the horizontal lines of the horizontal lines of the passing suburban trains and public buses.
Above the concrete skeletons of rotting and the smooth surfaces of renovated slowly drifting clouds, sparingly revealing the pale blue of the winter sky. Behind all these structures and patterns lies a changing technology in transition. How will we generate and distribute heat and light for everyone in the future?
