***Podcast transcript***

Today I’m focusing on marking time. On saying ‘I was here’.

If time moves on relentlessly, how can we get a hold of it?

How can we tame our fear of being washed away, of our existence being meaningless?

By making a mark.

And the artist who devoted his life on making marks, and remarks, on time itself is On Kawara.

Day after day, year after year, he produced his day paintings. Deceptively simple canvases consisting of a monochrome background and the day’s date painted in white letters which look so perfect you think they’ve been stencilled or made by a machine.

Time plays a role in most of Kawara’s other work as well.

The ‘I got up’ postcards which he sent for over 12 years bear a stamp stating ‘I got up’ and the time he got up at.

And the ‘I am still alive’ telegrams are exactly that: telegrams he sent stating ‘I am still alive’.

So what’s going on here?

Kawara is making his mark on time, on history, within extreme constraints. He uses rigour and discipline, repetition and rules, to defeat death.

Almost every day he ‘uses’ his art to confirm his existence. And in doing so, he confirms it not only for that day, but for posterity.

If you think this is some weird gimmick, think again.

It took him hours to produce a single day painting. If he didn’t finish it on the day, he destroyed it. But on some days he produced more than one.

He produced more than 3,000 day paintings, taking his practice with him wherever he went, and adapting the language to the country he created the painting in. After a while, he started creating boxes to put the paintings in and lining them with a pages from that day’s newspaper.

This is not a vacuous conceptual gesture.

This kind of consistent effort is an act of devotion, prayer almost.

It is a continuous effort to ward off mortality.

Looking at one of his paintings you see the man who painted it, on a particular day. He uses the way we specify a certain day in time as an invocation. As we wee it, read it, he lives, again.

On Kawara made his mark.

And this made me think of Beyonce’s song, I was here. If you don’t know it look for it on YouTube - I can’t share it here for copyright reasons.

This song, which was used for a very successful UN campaign on World Humanitarian Day, is all about the impact our lives can have on the world.

In saying, or rather, singing ‘I was here’, she states ‘My existence mattered, I made a change’ - I made my mark.

Beyonce’s song is much more morally charged - it’s about making your mark in a positive sense, making the world a better place.

Kawara’s work is ever so neutral.

But he too, was here. And made a difference.

Today, I will be thinking about how marking time could impact my life and art practice - and I will ponder on what will be my way of saying ‘I was here’.

I hope this podcast will inspire you to do the same - and I’ll be back tomorrow, with more on time.