Mittwoch, 3. September, 1980, 12 Uhr 45 bis 13 Uhr 57
/26
- Wednesday, 3 September 1980, 12:45 to 13:57
- Mittwoch, 3. September, 1980, 12 Uhr 45 bis 13 Uhr 57
- 1980
- 26 b&w slides
This series of 26 black and white slides named for the day and timespan during which it was taken shows a succession of movements and action performed in the context of conceptual art practices, enacted through and with the photographic medium. The camera assumes one single perspective, showing the artist’s kitchen with dishes waiting to be washed and put away. A conceptual approach of orderliness and exactitude evolves as the slideshow progresses, studying the action. Over the course of more than an hour, the artist is photographed in her endeavor to clean the kitchen and thereby put it in a state that annihilates any traces of the past. Through a mechanically set exposure time, the movements of the artist are captured while her fleeting gestures evade the camera’s otherwise sharp focus on her environment. Hence, this succession of slides accentuates the qualities of the mechanical apparatus and its analog features while adhering to a proto-filmic scenario. Although a very personal statement within Margherita Spiluttini’s oeuvre, this work still does refer to the artist’s focus on architectural and environmental details amidst which people reside and move about only for a certain period of time. There are also visible references to Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s “Frankfurt Kitchen” of the 1920s, in which a rational, unpretentious, and socially oriented mode of living supported progress towards a more egalitarian, gender-balanced world. W.S.