The Nature of Time (EN)

by Rogério Taveira

… Duration is the subject matter Katrin Korfmann works on both in photography and in urban installations. We may state that, irrespective of the piece in question, the work of Katrin Korfmann results from reflecting on the workings of photography in their most profound sense. This involves working time and shaping it in different fashions while still maintaining the same questioning. Only thus can we understand the recurring extinctionof recognisable space that Korfmann deliberately targets. Space is worked particularly through its temporal components: suspension and rhythm.
In her urban installations, where such extinction is more to the fore, Korfmann deploys large, temporary and strongly coloured walls that seek to establish a new relationship between the viewer and the surrounding spaces. This would be the obvious reading, however, there does also seem to be an infra-reading that places these installations within the field of questioning time and not of space. More specifically, they remind us that space only exists in time. As conscious beings, we also exist in time, in various times. There are at least two: that of the body and of the soul, or material and spirit according to Bergson. Each also bears both differing durations and lives. Absolutely blue walls (Blue Octagon) or those in pink (Pink Wall) bring about a merger, even if only momentarily, of the two constituent aspects of being in a time verging on that experienced when dreaming: a suspended time, non-referential. At this point, we are confronted by the Self prior to searching for references in relation to this new space generated by the object. We may complementarily refer to Susan Sontag and her account of the importance of the photographic camera as a means of appropriating an unknown space. As an object of security in an insecure environment, we may perhaps understand that that insecurity in new surroundings relates more to the confrontation of the self than to some search for physical points of reference...
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