Time Transfusion is a long-term multimedia project by Lina Rica, an artist based in Ljubljana, which explores the phenomenon of time and the possibilities of its perception in the contemporary information age. The project comprises a series of works—older, recent, and in progress—exhibited in different combinations depending on the space, with each new context adding an additional layer of meaning and interpretation. In the Split exhibition, which takes place at two locations, the Loggia of the Golden Gate and the City Library Marko Marulić, the artist presents a truly complex cross-section of works/units thematizing time, its given structures and fluidities. The exhibition features the light installation NowHere, the animation Big Time, video documentation of the long-term action From Sea to Sea, the installation Very Important Notifications About Time, the object Everything, photographs from The Sleeping Beauty, the object The Self, the drawing/graph Words through Time, and the prints Time and It’s Time.

Lina Rica’s artistic strategies are based on the use of language as a tool for communication and on representing modern instruments of time measurement/expression, making the idea of individual and collective perception of time visible to the observer. Language—an (in)adequate tool through which we interpret the world and which never fully conveys human experience, emotion, or perception—is here a representation of our similarly limited ability to truly sense and understand time, despite our modern tools of measurement. We are taught to experience time linearly, but as the artist herself points out in her works, in these “post-times” time is anything but linear or chronological: it is speculative, fluid, unstable, constantly transforming, merging—where past, present, and future become concepts stripped of their traditional properties. Contemporary complex societies, in which human experience has lost primacy, exist only in relation to digital infrastructure and chaotic networks, while the individual and subjective experience of time have been completely disintegrated.

When we think about time, without extensive knowledge of the history of its perception, the question arises: where does our experience of the passage of time even come from—does it exist within us organically, independently of context, society, and the era we live in, or is it a concept imposed from the moment we began thinking of time in terms of measurability, usability, and productivity? What about time before human existence and perception, about time outside human experience, about Earth’s history so distant and deep it’s impossible to grasp—deep time? The removal of the human from the overall picture is, in some way, also happening now in the post-digital age, where the concepts of past, present, and future have been completely inverted: algorithms predict desires we aren’t even conscious of, thus making the future present, while the past, lacking adequate cognitive tools, becomes insufficient for understanding the now. Is the future, then, already here, and is it even meaningful to talk about the present or the here and now—unless we do so in a purely spiritual or ontological sense? “What is happening in the present is based on appropriating the future,” states the brilliant text The Speculative Time Complex. The present is more conditioned by the future than by the past, and old frameworks no longer apply, falling short in helping us understand the current moment. Our perception of time has inevitably changed, influenced by a network of fleeting anchors that prevent us from feeling any kind of certainty.

In his critique of the present, Derrida also claims that the present is corrupted by both the past and the future, that there is always an absence at the center of presence, and that history cannot be interpreted as a procession of presences. The present, then, exists in a speculative relation to both past and future.

The light installation NowHere is a poetic and philosophical wordplay which, depending on which letters are illuminated, we may read as “nowhere”, “here”, or “now.” The glowing letters evoke scenes from dystopian films, flashing rhythmically and prompting reflection on meaning, but also signaling the instability of structures we are accustomed to relying on—or perhaps, various perspectives on the experience of time. On one hand, all that exists is here and now, and this has been true since the beginning of existence. Yet the problem is that, in our effort to live, we mostly find ourselves nowhere, in the gaps, in a kind of attempt to halt time. Another element, this time psychological, that prevents us from experiencing the present is that our perception of time (like identity) is shaped by memories and fears. Do past and future even exist then? How much does our perception of time in any given moment influence the present—a present overloaded with information like never before?

In her curatorial text for the 2019 exhibition Here now/Nowhere in Cardedeu near Barcelona, Mercé Alsina cites Austrian theorist Armen Avanessian, who claims “that language changes the meaning of time not only on a linguistic and conceptual level, but also on a material and ontological level.” Alsina concludes that this work “is not merely a linguistic game but a proposal for material and ontological transformation of space and time—or at least of the way we experience them.”

The work Very Important Notifications About Time presents an animation on two screens listing phrases collected via Google searches of terms like “time is,” “past is,” “present is,” “time will,” “the future was,” etc. By collecting the most frequent search results, the artist creates a kind of cross-section of the dominant perception of time today. Time, past, and future are also addressed in the work Words through Time, a drawing/graph showing how often these words have appeared and been used throughout history.

The animation Big Time consists of chronologically animated mobile phone screenshots collected since 2017, featuring repeating or symmetrical digital clock numbers. Its presentation literally mimics a mobile screen, pointing to the acceleration of contemporary life, a world based on measurement and comparison, where the value of our lives is equated with productivity. What does it even mean to “live fast,” and how much has the information age and our constant exposure to evidence of transience changed our perception of time? Thoughts and time are at the root of all our fears—so is time, as a measurable concept, even relevant to human self-understanding?

Through a kind of redesign of contemporary time-measuring tools, the artist also questions her own position in the present, which—apart from measuring units—offers few firm anchors.

The poetic, performative action From Sea to Sea (initiated in 2006), in which the artist pours three deciliters of seawater from one sea into another (the Adriatic, North Sea, Atlantic, etc.), points to the relativity of measurable time and raises questions about time perception and the concept of eternity. The act may be read as an illustration of cyclical time, a metaphor for the passage of modern time. Cyclicality—where time potentially never runs out—seems absurd when compared to the linear perception of time dominant in the West, where time is always lacking, and unused time is irretrievably lost, as Jasna Jernejšek writes in the exhibition introduction Time Transfusion.

Everything is a work in which we observe in real-time the etching and transformation of a zinc printing plate submerged in a solution of copper sulphate, salt, and water—implementing the element of time in the most direct way through processuality. The reaction is strongest at first, then slows down, and over the three weeks of the exhibition, we witness the decomposition of a living organism—a presence of the natural cycle within the gallery space. In a deeply poetic, melancholic, yet direct way, the work shows how everything is subject to change and how nothing escapes time. The word revealed at the end—everything—also alludes to erosion and disappearance through time, while remaining open enough to allow multiple interpretations and inscriptions of meaning. The eroded material collects at the bottom of a plexiglass container. This process is different in each gallery space, yet always prompts the question: is it truly about disappearance or merely a transformation into another form, shape, vibration? The work also raises the question: can we preserve ideas and emotions from decay through writing, speech, fixing them in words? Is language enough for that? The traditions of conceptual art, processuality, and performativity converge here in a work that painfully and beautifully reveals the effects of the passage of time.

The effect of time in the context of socialist architectural heritage is addressed in the work The Sleeping Beauty. Black-and-white photographs depict a children’s sanatorium in Krvavica, near Makarska. A modernist architectural masterpiece designed by Rikard Marasović in 1964, it is one of many buildings and monuments from socialist Yugoslavia that have been left to ruin and, following privatization, remain neglected. Initially a military children’s respiratory hospital, then a tourist military resort, and in the off-season open to workers, students, and the underprivileged, during the war (1991–95) it housed refugees and the wounded, and in 2000 was demilitarized and transferred to the Club Adriatic agency, after which it deteriorated. Rica is again interested in the impact of time—visible in the decay of this extraordinary complex—and in the spirit of a time marked by erasure and suppression of memory. We must not succumb to the aesthetic allure of these photographs, but instead view them as commentary on the dominant, official politics of memory and the treatment of cultural heritage and the socialist legacy.

This legacy, personal and collective memory, and remembrance are further addressed in the work The Self: inside a small white sleeve are three commemorative badges like those found in many Yugoslav homes during childhood. However, these badges bear the artist’s own profile portrait in gold, silver, and copper. A witty play on Tito’s commemorative badges, appropriating the dimensions of the packaging, golden letters, profile portraits, and materials, prompts questions about collective memory in this region. By adopting a form that has nearly vanished from our visual culture, Rica once again explores the theme of time’s transformation, both personal and collective, and how we react today to things that no longer exist. Playing with her own portrait—just as she does with words in some of her light installations—she adopts advertising strategies and forms while commenting on a time when idols no longer exist and we are all icons.

Words and a critical gaze on time also form the graphic work Time, which, following the tradition of conceptual art, uses repetition to underscore the absurdity and speed of the current era, and the lack of leisure—a key form of resistance against unjust social systems.

Can a critical understanding of time offer a critical view of the moment we inhabit—and open the possibility for new presents, new solutions, relationships, more humane systems? Through her work, the artist explores these possibilities, while remaining aware of the necessity of constantly reassessing our own position within rapidly changing systems that leave little room for any kind of security.

—Tanja Špoljar