Just received an invitation of the De Pont Museum in the Netherlands. The first paragraph goes like this:

De Pont Museum is delighted to announce the opening of Time Changes Everything, the first solo exhibition in the Netherlands of Icelandic artist #RagnarKjartansson. The artist’s wide-ranging and internationally celebrated body of work — comprising performances and video installations, as well as painting, graphic work, and sculpture — occupies a unique position in the contemporary art landscape. This survey show at De Pont encompasses the full diversity of the artist’s oeuvre, presenting well-known pieces alongside new installations.

Excerpt of the email invitation by De Pont Museum, Tilburg the Netherlands.

I read a little further in the email and stumble upon the word #timelessness . Curious what they share now:

TIMELESSNESS

The use of extended repetition as an effect recurs throughout the exhibition. To surrender to it is to be sucked into and then lost in a timelessness that sees narrative and action receding into the background. 

Bliss (2020), for example, is a live video recording of a 2011 durational performance in which the closing aria from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro is sung continuously for 12 hours, immersing the viewer in a mesmerizing mantra of love and forgiveness that puts the stamina of the performers to the test.

Excerpt of the invitation email of De Pont Museum Tilburg.

Listen to the closing aria from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, for 12 hours!!!.. is going to bring me in a state of TIMELESSNESS?!!!! Interesting idea. You have to experience this if you feel like it. Which part of the aria? See below, this performed by the #BayrischeStaatsOper.

Spring into Heaven

Imagine singing it or listening to this part of the aria for twelve hours. Not my experience of TIMELESSNESS. Exhaustion, yes! It might be a healing experience for you in a whole new way. To become so exhausted in the human drama that you finally feel the urge to let go of it in it’s entirety or it might go like this: being so immersed in the #beauty of it that you spontaneously spring into #Heaven you can do that in the first minute listening to it. I will join you!