[-empyre-] Hongbin Wu post on Duration

[Timothy Conway Murray]

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Thanks, Tim, for inviting me to join the discussion on "Duration" in November. It's such a coincidence that the theme of the China Art Exhibition in 11th Florence Biennale which I curated in 2017 is also "Duration". So when I first met Tim in Beijing in August this year, Tim said humorously that it is fate! I think this is also the discussion and cognition of the same concept by the East and West curators from different contexts at roughly the same time, as described in a poem "Time flows through here, we happen to be present." Maybe our thinking subtly corresponds to the "Duration" theory of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Indeed, when I was determining the theme of the exhibition, it was precisely because I saw the compatibility between Bergson's philosophy of time and the individual perceptual understanding experience of Chinese traditional philosophy.
"Duration" has a poetic translation in Chinese -- "绵延". The translation uses a synaesthesia about space to explain time, however opposing the "spatiality" of time is exactly what Bergson wants to do. I think there may be different presentation ways when we face the "Duration".
The theme of this year's Cornell Biennale is "Duration: Passage, Persistence, Survival." It is a clear and broad topic. Ethnic, gender, political, cultural, ecological and even scientific issues are included in the discussion. It has a sociological constructive possibility to explore contemporary people's duration consciousness from different perspectives.
Exhibition "Duration" which I curated was presented from the perspective of "something lacking". Such as the "shadowing" of the time process. The existence of history and the present presence are two main endpoints that China presents to the world. Complex, diverse and even contradictory time experiences are vague. Additionally, as we all know, China currently lacks context for discussing race, gender, and some sensitive topics. These problems are hidden in the "temporality" of art to be discovered. The works of the artists I selected are based on it.Back to Bergson,"Duration" is a truth of life, and people should think in the time.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts about our East/West common interest in Duration.

Best,

Hongbin Wu

Timothy Murray
Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial
http://cca.cornell.edu
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu <http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/>
Professor of Comparative Literature and English

B-1 West Sibley Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853






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[Timothy Conway Murray]

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For her posts, Lyrae van Clief-Stefanon is generously sharing with us poems from her Cornell Biennial performance with Emily Stark-Menneg, "Measured/The Clover Project." For today, we share her poem,
"Measured."

Measured

If space makes the pattern, her absence is filling a quota.

The president says,
“we’re a nation of laws” :—
The limerick
under her dreaming :—that lilting.

At seven a Seuss-rhyme’s still funny.
And who’s to say wouldn’t have been, still, at 30?
The Sneetches or What Was I Scared Of?

She’s seven, asleep on the living room sofa.

in amphibrachs—:
who hears her, breathing?

If space makes the pattern, her absence is filling a quota.

This absence—: Aiyana.

But what was the officer scared of?
What reaches for him in the recesses of his attention?
What formal suggestion of darkness
needs stagger
to formless?

If space makes the pattern—: egregious—:

This grief in the rhythm of—: uplift
too :— graphic—: a measure of struggle.
Which struggle with law holds

the dark in it? Keeps
the dark of
Quinletta, LaToya, Kimkesia, Oneka, Tawana…
my still-breathing cousins
] your still-breathing cousins [
alive in it. Aiyana. Her breath in perfection—: at seven—: This measure
for measure on measure on measure
or else—:

︶
Law is dead, Aiyana. It never was

July 14, 2013
Statement by the President

“The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.”

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/14/statement-president


Link to the Sneetches

Link to article on Aiyana Stanley-Jones

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/17/aiyana-stanley-jones-joseph-weekley-trial_n_5824684.html

Timothy Murray
Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial
http://cca.cornell.edu
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu <http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/>
Professor of Comparative Literature and English

B-1 West Sibley Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853




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