The Intimacy of Time

A surveillance monitor showing a fisheye view down into the two former shower cubicles, the 1952 clock in one and the 2023 clock in the other, a timestamp burned into the corner — *The Intimacy of Time*, 2023 — the surveillance stream of the two clocks, as shown to the visitor. Photo: © Achim Hatzius 2023

Year: 2023
Exhibited: Exit is No Object — House for the End of the World, Berlin
14 April – 5 May 2023

Two former showers, two clocks. The left one begins to tick with the display of 25 September 1952, the date of imprisonment of Ursula Rumin, from which on she might have taken showers in this very space. The right one from 14 April 2023 marks the exhibition's beginning, excavating what might have happened in the area with a lag of 71 years, destined to disappear at the exhibition's end.

A flip-clock on a tiled wall showing the year 2023 and Friday 21 April — *The Intimacy of Time*, 2023 — the clock showing 2023. Photo: © Achim Hatzius 2023

A flip-clock on a tiled wall showing the year 1952 and an October date — *The Intimacy of Time*, 2023 — the clock showing 1952. Photo: © Achim Hatzius 2023

Both are linked through the events of incarceration and remembrance, bearing high intensity of change of intimacy but physically inaccessible to the viewer.

Two former shower cells seen through a doorway, white-tiled, a flip-clock on the back wall of each, 1952 on the left and 2023 on the right, a light stand and cables in the passage between them; the rooms closed to visitors — *The Intimacy of Time*, 2023 — the two former shower rooms, closed to visitors. Photo: © Achim Hatzius 2023

And yet they are penetrated by another time-measuring device: a surveillance camera, positioned above and thus evoking yet another event of high intensity, a forbidden, violent intimacy, that streams the time of both clocks and marks the image with the built-in time-stamp, bearing another lag of a couple of milliseconds behind the physical movement of clock hands. All three, entangled in their different intensities, reveal the intimacy of time.