It is the last chance to hear the music from Lyota Yagi’s vinyl record made of ice at Platform China’s Hong Kong outpost. The exhibition “Once Was Now, Now is Over, Yet Will Come” has been extended for one week until November 23.
The post-1980s Japanese artist shares billing with his contemporary Takehiro Iikawa for this show curated by Hitomi Hasegawa. The meaning of time is explored in their works of music, video, and performance. Both artists perceive time as “homogenous, empty time” following Walter Benjamin’s concepts. Time passes simply for them and one moment is the same as another.
Yagi plays with time-based music and video compositions as well as physical media such as peeling off vaporised aluminium from CD-R and sticking the pieces onto canvas for his series “CD” (2011). The artist also carved a gramophone record out of ice for the work “Vinyl” (2005-2008), such that as the record plays it slowly melts and the song eventually becomes noise. See the video of the work below.
Iikawa’s conceptual pieces include “Stealing Time” (2007) in which everyone on a futsal team has been informed of a shortened match time, apart from one player. The artist records the reactions of this one player who does not realize his perception of time has been manipulated.
“Once Was Now, Now is Over, Yet Will Come” until November 23 at Platform China Contemporary Art Institute (HK), www.platformchina.org
Vinyl. Moon River. 2005-2008. Lyota Yagi. Pop Politics: Activisms at 33 Revolutions. CA2M. By Miguel de Guzmán from Fuzzy Now Broadcasting TV on Vimeo.