Museo Carmen Thyssen

Time Laboratory

Even when visiting a museum, which is a place intended for slow contemplation, we tend not to look properly at anything as we are not accustomed to take our time in order to seek out nuances, differences and subtleties. Our gaze is essentially global and selective. We summarise reality as we pass by in order to control it, losing its mystery as a result.

"If we don’t take time to look we will never succeed in seeing anything."

As in Auster’s story, the camera is fixed. Using the same viewpoint and location, each participant must take a single photograph of what lies outside the Museum. Rather than focusing the gaze on what is inside it, on this occasion the Museum becomes a vast setting from which to look out. Only variations of light and changes in the passers-by will indicate the passing of time.