Postman Time
Manchester July 2007
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jay Johnson. Welcome to Il Tempo Del Postino. This is the world premiere.
I would like to introduce some out of focus ideas. I am a ventriloquist. So I won’t be opening my mouth.
Whether I like it or not. This will all help us remember Lacan’s question.
But who speaks.
It is not a tape recording.
Listen.
Maybe I am the ring master. Or perhaps a living caption in a temporary museum.
Cedric Price was an architect. He had the idea to build a museum in the time it takes to drink a coffee.
Before these artists were born he designed a Fun House. A place for cultural projects. This would have been perfect for us.
Price thought about time as much as space. For him it was the fourth dimension of design. The Fun Palace should be a flexible structure. Buildings can disappear. Structures can be dropped
into place.
Of course, he also devised an airport on wheels. Picabia said that we have round heads so we can think in different directions. Price designed an aviary which can travel when the birds migrate.
This is a group exhibition. Art history is a history of objects. But exhibitions have a history too.
Thirteen artists have a proposition for you. Il Tempo Del Postino means “Postman Time”. “Facteur Temps” in French. A factor is a mathematical operation. A facteur is a French postman. A fading information provider.
You just heard Liam Gillick’s “Factories in the Snow”. His attempt to play “Grandola Villa Morena” from memory. The song was used to signal the start of the revolution in Portugal in 1974. A tune as a signal. And a link between time and action. This is a chance to tour an exhibition without moving.
Each artist in sequence, not side-by-side. This is Il Tempo Del Postino.
PHILIPPE PARRENO is a French artist and film-maker who lives and works in Paris, France.
He rose to prominence in the 1990s, earning critical acclaim for his work that employs a diversity of media including film, sculpture, performance, drawing and text. Taking the exhibition as a medium, Parreno radically redefined the exhibition experience by explor- ing its possibilities as a coherent “object” rather than as a collection of individual works.
Parreno has exhibited and published internationally. Recently he has presented solo exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013–14); Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2013); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London (2010–11); Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York (2009–10); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2009–10); Kunsthalle Zürich (2009) and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2009). His work is represented in major collections worldwide.