Aporia, Kairos

(c) Márton Zalka
Aporia, 2022
Cooperative game (Salvaged wood, aluminium sheets, playballs, sand, 100x40x90 cm )
 
Kairos, 2022
Interactive video installation (Salvaged wood, ultrasonic sensor, arduino, MacMini, Projector, 120x60x90 cm)
 

Both my works, Aporia and Kairos, connect with the idea of chronology.  In my works, I present time in its barest form. 

 

 

aporia (Ancient Greek: ᾰ̓πορῐ́ᾱ, romanized: aporíā, lit. 'literally: "lacking passage",
also: "impasse", "difficulty in passage", “puzzlement”')

 

It also means resistence. It does not only refer to actual movements but also to the metaphorical component of doubt. It often arises as a result of equally plausible yet inconsistent premises. 

 

I transformed a well-known game into a stage of Aporia. Inspired by the Japanese concept of Ma, which is based on the perception of negative space or gap without necessarily requiring a physical compositional element. The concept of Ma uses the unknown, and takes it into consideration. 

The original game leaves a very limited flexibility regarding what and how do you deal with the empty slots in between the two surfaces. I altered the structure of the game, by replacing the partition that was holding the two surfaces together with sand. This sand fills the negative space where visions and ideas regarding a winning strategy of making 3 in a row would be executed. At first the sand and the separated surfaces seem very helpful and flexible, but with time and investment, one realizes its limits very quickly. Suddenly the former idea of the game changes. The competition becomes a shared goal where one helps the other in realizing their visions. 

 

I want to raise awareness of the temporality of ideas. The paradox originality of the genius that is born and nurtured within systems. However, when a system is less controlling in terms of having faith in the unknown, it nurtures processes differently. It forces cooperation and a very different way of sensing time spent in it. You focus more on the tiny particles (person, movement, idea) that bulid up processes then on the outcome. I deeply believe in untainted personal and unique approaches and am looking for ways of accomodating them.

 

kairos (Ancient Greek: καιρός, “the right, critical, or opportune moment”. In
modern Greek, kairos also means “weather”. )

Greeks had two words to make sense of time. One is well known, Chronos stands for the chronological sequences of events, linear occuring of things after the other.  While Kairos is more about causality. There is no scale or order to it, it is an endless web of interactions and reactions. In this web of encounters, we need a more native way of processing to navigate. Usually we navigate and decide based on logical concepts, but the more options and realtions you have the harder it becomes to find the right drawer. 

With my slideshow I want to show this overwhelming realm of Kairos where our only ways to navigate is our emotions and senses. Without wanting to make sense, allowing our body to react to it. Because you leave most moments with things that you brought into it.