tempus edax rerumtime devours all thingsI was on a university campus recently and met a lovely young woman who told me with sweet earnestness that her art was mostly in time-based media. I smiled and nodded, then after a moment's reflection decided it would be worth showing my ignorance in order to understand what she was talking about. "What is a time based medium?" I asked. "Oh!" she said, clearly astonished, "um...like video, you know?" She seemed almost embarrassed for me (she really was a sweetie.)
Somehow the term time-based media brought up other explanations to my ever-churning brain, one of which was planned decomposition, or art that is made knowing it will not last, like buddhist sand paintings or beautifully frosted cakes or ice sculptures. Now that's bravery. Here is my own small ongoing art project in that kind of time-based media: egg faces. Every week I boil up a batch of eggs. Once they are cool, I draw faces on them with a soft lead pencil and put them in a bowl and into the fridge. Sometimes the faces are cartoonish or sketchy, sometimes very detailed. But simply or elaborately enfaced, the egg shells all get torn into eventually in my family's constant quest for food, and thrown onto the compost heap.
ars brevis vita longa
