"As Soon as Possible-Acceleration in Contemporary Society."

Looking-Assignment

by Jamie Spatt

Fast food. The world wide web. Ipods, cell phones, game boys, and televisions. Trains, planes, automobiles. From the food industry to the entertainment industry, to industrial industry, everything today is operating at a quickly increasing pace compared to the steady crawl of those generations who came before us. "As soon as possible- Acceleration in contemporary society" at the Strozzina in Florence is an elegantly posed critique on what it means to live in the high speed society that we find ourself immersed in today. In the basement of the exhibition space of Palazzo Strolli, curator Franziska Nori asks ten international contemporary artists to offer their unique responses to their experience with accelerated modern culture, some explicit, some aesthetically beautiful, and some more simple and open-ended, all giving us opportunity to reflect on how we humanly fit into the constantly evolving pace of our time. 

One of the primary places we often feel the rush of the times is at work. We all know what it is like to be faced with deadlines, living pay check to pay check, and being 'on the clock' for up to or more than forty hours a week. Mark Formanek takes this experience and quite literally puts his 'workers', 'on the clock'. In his piece entitled 'Standard Time', a group of men in hard hats construct and deconstruct a monumentally sized 'digital' faced clock built of wood, that actually keeps real time for viewers in the gallery. The piece is a video installation projected on the wall. The men continue as the video loops all day long, twenty four hours a day, building and rebuilding the clock, with no lunch breaks or cigarettes. The piece leaves us with the feeling of staring at the clock all work day long, just waiting to go home for the night to rest. But unlike these us, these workers never do. 

In a Completely different style Jens Risch carefully knots thread over and over until they become small lumps that are reminiscent of coral, or some naturalistic form of personal importance. Placing them in glass cases on pedestals, and displaying a video of her carefully knotting hands creating the pieces shows us that they are precious. Something to be treasured. But were they not in the cases, on the pedestals, process revealed, would we see them as important? Or overlook them for something more entertaining? In any case the slower movement in this piece is refreshing and helps to keep the show in balance, the aspects of which are, as they should be, varied as life itself. 

One aspect we do not see in either of these pieces, which life is full of, especially at this speed, is tension, and what happens when tension goes unrelieved. In Arcangelo Sassolino's 'Pneumatic Expansion of a living force' we see just how tense this life can get. The piece is a glass bottle in the middle of a glass tank, which eventually explodes, shattering the bottle and startling museum goers with a loud sound. We look at this piece with apprehension, wondering, will explode while I am standing in front of it? Or will I avert the point of shatter, and 'safely' walk away? Is our culture and way of life a ticking time bomb? Can all the glory of a high speed life like the one we live in survive throughout the centuries or will it eventually self-destruct, leaving us in a dystopia? 

As far as the future goes, no one can be certain what will come of our race-pace culture, and the world as we know it today. But through works like the pieces we see in 'As Soon as Possible' we are made aware and conscious of both the problems and the benefits of our life styles. Maybe the artists are asking us to slow down, maybe to do nothing but just embrace our awareness, or maybe to say what the hell and speed it up and see where the modern trends are taking us. But most importantly, as all art does, these works at the very least serve to make us question and critique our world, others living around us, and most importantly ourselves, the choice is ours what we decide to do post-gallery experience.