Event POSTPONED

Following the Direção-Geral da Saúde [Portuguese Public Health Authority] recommendations devised to contain the spread of the new Coronavirus (COVID-19), and according to the contingency plan in place, Culturgest informs it will be closed from January 15 until the end of the lockdown.

A Japanese survivor from the Second World War, On Kawara constructed his whole work as a humanist homage to the time of collective and individual life, as well as to the confrontation between these scales. On the last day of TheInvisible Show, we mark the presence of Kawara’s work at Culturgest with the live presentation of the piece that, in the last few months, has occupied the second exhibition room.

One Million Years traces the passage of that gigantic mass of time – a million years – in the voice of women and men reading aloud, one after the other, the immense succession of years, based on books designed by Kawara for this purpose. The artist added to the unchangeable law of passing time another rule that was no less inflexible, but whose result could vary: each presentation of this piece must allow for the readers’ pronunciation in English to be heard, giving the work its body and substance. The years that have passed are dedicated to all those who have already lived and the future years to come are dedicated to the last of us to exist.