Time
1982
Permanent oral intervention
“What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked and try to explain, I am baffled.”
Saint Augustine, Confessions
For Ian Wilson, all art is information and communication. Since the late 1960s, he has abandoned minimalist art in order to elaborate “discussions” which he carries out in museums, galleries, or at private collectors’ homes. He invites us to approach a philosophical subject by inciting us to question an everyday word.
Time is an oral description of a speech act. The work exists by way of curiosity awakened by this word and in an oral dialogue which we initiate, to satisfy that curiosity, with the present audience:
“What does Time consist in?”
“It’s the word time being spoken.”
Ian Wilson
Born in 1940 in South Africa. Lives and works in New York, NY.
