The international Debrecen Artist in Residence, which has been an annual event since 2006, is always organized around a particular theme. During this two-week project, in addition to creating, collaborative thinking also plays a prominent role, and this is reflected in the programmes, which are open to the general public.<\/p>
In 2017 we focused on the relationship between art and design; our motto for that year was \u201cDesigned artwork\u201d. In 2018 we used the coined expression \u201cdesign resistance\u201d, as a jumping-off point to explore design as a means of resistance and refusal, and resistance as the resistance to the omnipotence of design. In its most recent incarnation in 2019, the Residency confronted its resident artists, and the visitors of the artists\u2019 residence and the exhibition, presenting the completed artworks, with the issue of material. We posed the question: \u201cWhat is the material of art?\u201d<\/p>
\u201cWhen is the time for art?\u201d This is the \u2013 somewhat simplified \u2013 question being posed today. Simplified, because not only art has time, but also the work of art, and not only as an external dimension, in a measurable way (when was it made? how long did it take to make it?), but often also in terms of the figure(s) it portrays.<\/p>
In the fine arts, two conceptions of time come into play. One is abstract and relates to the reference system of the style of the work. The other is perhaps more specific: it\u2019s the time of the staged narrative of the work, the history of the events that take place with the \u201ccharacters\u201d depicted in the work.<\/p>
Abstract time integrates the work into the order of fine art and, more broadly, into culture. Its fundamental question is when the work was made and has little regard for the passing of time in relation to an artwork. Nor does abstract time heed a work\u2019s physical aging, deterioration, or, in some cases, its complex history or provenance: from whom to whom it went, where and how it was stored, and what mark it left on and in the artwork. In this perspective, the object may have a story and a time of its own, but the work does not; it always shines as it did at the moment it was created. To discover the work in the object, regardless of the state it is in, to look out of it, as it were: that is the desire of this gaze. This gaze that \u2013 perhaps by necessity, but nevertheless \u2013 works against the object.<\/p>
The time of the story displayed in the work also prevails against the object. With very few exceptions, the object and its parts and elements (frame, canvas, paint, stone, metal, wood, paper, graphite) are static. In terms of the story, they exist outside of time, and they can convey it almost exclusively through \u201ctricks\u201d. One such \u201ctrick\u201d is the multiple representation of a character of a story within a single image (accordingly, this is meant to show a plot or a life story moving through time, with the help of a series of still moments) or the condensing of a chain of events to a point from which that which precedes and that which follows can be unfolded, as it happens in the case of the Laoco\u00f6n Group or the Oath of the Horatii. These tricks \u2013 to give time to what is motionless, body and space to what is flat and voice to what is silent \u2013 work most of the time, but there are times when someone asks about them: why should a statue scream if no sound comes out of its throat and the work loses its sense of grandeur? Why should we display stories if there are tools suitable for doing so, which are not images? After such questions, time, space, and the story may be removed from the artwork, and it will be as it can be in its material nature.<\/p>
At the same time, there are non-static solutions such as mobile statues, and there are less astonishing \u201ctime carriers\u201d as well, such as the fast fixation of an abrupt gesture in drawings or paintings. The time of the object or the time of creation becomes the time of the work. This may not satisfy those who have banished the illusion of time, space, and story from the work, but it certainly opens up a field for creation and observation which would at least have remained hidden without these questions.<\/p>