Hatice Utkan Ă–zden
It is plain to realise that art, in particular installation art, is connected to the time. A work of art and especially an installation mostly deals with what is present, the “moment”.
Betül ÇOTUKSÖKEN, a professor of philosophy, states in her 2013 talk “Augustinus and Philosophy” that human as an individual tends to collide the situations they encounter in daily life with those already present in their minds. In fact, she puts it in the words through her own perspective and says that subjects in minds represent the “universals” and daily life experiences represent the “singulars”. Everyone goes to those experiences in their minds to explain concrete situations. ÇOTUKSÖKEN calls these concepts “universals”, a term that is used greatly in medieval philosophy and adds: “Concepts we have (universals) and situations in daily life (singulars) don’t always move smoothly and we may have a hard time making sense. This creates a tension.”
ÇOTUKSÖKEN does not include contemporary art in her words. However, her statement is very effective that what she says also applies to artistic expressions, along with life. When we think deeper, we come to realise people really have a hard time making sense certain situations. Subjects like art and philosophy help us to comprehend both the world we have in ourselves and the world at the outside. That is why contemporary art is explained as “Existing right in the life.”. Contemporary art helps us turn the “idea” to “concrete” and the “concrete” to “idea” and maybe even connect the concepts between concrete and idea.
There is a concept in all these concepts that affects us deeply from the inside and the outside. It also comes as intangible and irreplaceable. Time, a challenge for us within our minds through thoughts from past, present and future, it is also a reality we need in the outer world. In fact, “time” exists in our lives as something “universal” and “particular” at the same time. St. Augustinus explains this complicated subject as follows (quoted from Zübeyir Erkam’s YouTube video): past is an image in present, future is an expectation, present is reality in the “moment”
Connection of Time and Installation Art: Moment
