9-5 Clock

It's a rush hour in the city of Basel. Thousands of people running around — some are pressed for time, some are killing time, some are taking time off for some lunch…But so many of them intuitively stop in front of the eBoard of the Congress Center at the fairground, looking on those popping colours of the filmic clocks´ image by Parvez Imam during its screening in 2017. Isn't it ironic — we, whose lives depend on time are stopped by the depiction of it.  But it's not just some clock, it's Parvez Imam’s work called 9-5 Clock. Five minutes, five colours, five sentences to describe the reality we live in. Each of these five phases uses the digits from 1 to 12 — the black background step by step ‘hour after hour’ turns into a colour. The rhythm is created. This kind of rhythm makes the heart beats faster, as the clock changes, in the rhythm of passing time. For about twenty years 9 to 5 working days was the normality for workers, more than usual 8 hours working day seemed to be an extraction to the rule. Dolly Parton in her famous song ‘9 to 5’ , the soundtrack to the film of the same name sings : ‘Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'/Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin'/They just use your mind and they never give you credit/It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it.’ But how many hours are enough for a modern workaholic, or even a usual employee?  Industrialization and urbanization, those products of progress, gave modern people everything they needed, but took them one of their greatest treasures — time. The mechanical clock, invented almost seven centuries earlier, became more and more a symbol of passing time rather than a symbol of our belonging to the creator as it was in ancient societies. People all over the world are now always under pressure to not lose time, not to catch the right moment or even to pass away before their time comes. So that’s the never-ending attention to that phenomenon that we call time, that makes us stop in front the eBoard. It is the complexity of this ‘simple masterpiece’ — our living time.

Inna Humeniuk
    

--- Präsentationshinweise

videocity.bs beteiligt sich bei der „∑-Summe“-Aktion, bei welcher die unabhängigen Kunsträume in Basel sich im Jahr 2017 abgesprochen haben, das Medium Video im November in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen, um eine Vielfalt an Themen und Herangehensweisen vorzustellen. Ein Aufruf erging an die audiovisuellen regionalen Kunstschaffenden, Werke der letzten beiden Jahre einzureichen.  Die videocity.bs-Kuratorin Andrea Domesle hat aus den über 200 Einreichungen 5 Künstlerinnen und Künstler ausgewählt.
Obwohl unabhängig und eigentlich für einen Kunstraum entstanden, ist bei videocity.bs spannend zu erleben, welche Herausforderung die Grösse der elektronischen Werbetafel und der öffentliche Raum an die Videos stellen: Welchen Einfluss hat das quirlige Treiben des Messeplatzes auf die Wahrnehmung der autonomen Kunstwerke?  Das Leben verstärkt die Faktoren Bewegung und Raum in den Videos und dort, wo diese mit Ton komponiert sind, ersetzt es die ursprüngliche Tonspur.  Der Alltag lässt die Videos in neuem Licht erscheinen und umgekehrt, die Videos den Alltag.  videocity.bs wird einen Monat lang zum immateriellen Bestandteil des Messeplatz und regt zu Austausch, Verschiebungen von Ordnungssystemen, unerwarteten Blicken und Begegnungen an.

 --- Notes on Presentation

videocity.bs is participating in the "∑-Sum" action, in which the independent art spaces in Basel have in 2017 simultaneously agreed to put the artistic medium of video at the centre of focus, in order to showcase a multitude of themes and artistic approaches. An appeal by "Summe" association was made to the audiovisual artists working in the region to put forward works completed during the last two years. videocity.bs curator Andrea Domesle has chosen 5 artists from out of the 200 applications. 
Although independently created and intended for an art space, it is exciting to witness during videocity.bs what challenges the large electronic advertising screen and the public space pose to the videos: What influence does the lively hustle and bustle on the Trade Fair Square have on the reception of these autonomous art works? The surrounding flow of life itself amplifies the factors of movement and space within the videos and wherever these have been composed with sound, the original sound track is substituted by noise from daily life. Everyday life allows the videos to appear in a different light and conversely the videos experience the different framework of today. videocity.bs is poised to become an immaterial daily component of the trade fair square once more, stimulating exchange, the displacement of interpretative systems, summoning unexpected views and encounters.

http://www.parvezimam.net

--- EN

Under the title of “ ∑-Summe” five videos from five artists are brought together by the curator Andrea Domesle, format 16:9, 1-canal. The videos from Pascale Grau, Parvez Imam and Dirk Koy have a soundtrack, but during videocity.bs they are however shown without sound on the eBoard, so that the Basel city sound for once provide their unique sound track.
From 03.11. till 30.11.2017 the videos had been visible with certain exceptions on a daily basis from 8 till 24 hour, broadcast interspersed between the infos on the eBoard of the Basel Congress Center, Messeplatz 21, adjacent to the Swissôtel Le Plaza.

--- D

Unter dem Titel „∑-Summe“ sind fünf Videos, Format 16:9, 1-Kanal, gruppiert. Die Videos von Pascale Grau, Parvez Imam und Dirk Koy haben eine Soundspur, werden auf dem eBoard jedoch ohne Ton gezeigt, so dass die Stadtgeräusche ausnahmsweise den Sound bilden.
Vom  03.11. – 30.11.2017 wurden die Videos mit einigen Ausnahmen zwischen Infos auf dem eBoard des Congress Center Basel, Messeplatz 21, beim Swissôtel Le Plaza gezeigt. Täglich 8 bis 24 Uhr.

Artists: 
Matthias Aeberli, *1952, lives in Basel, matthiasaeberli.ch
Pascale Grau, *1960, lives in Basel, www.pascalegrau.ch
Parvez Imam, *1967, lives in Basel, www.parvezimam.net
Dirk Koy, *1977, lives in Allschwil, www.dirkkoy.com
Vladimir Mitrev, *1972, lives in Basel, www.vladimirmitrev.com