Over Kawara

“Movement by airplane creates an odd sensation of time. For example, when traveling by plane from Tokyo to New York, you leave around noon but arrive on the morning of the same day. This going back in time could be thought of as a kind of time travel. With the airplane we have obtained a method of, seem-ingly, expanding and contracting time. The price that must be paid for this ability is remaining in an immobile state for a long period of time during flight. This condition might be described as a kind of temporary death. Even though we are conscious and open-eyed, we are separated from the world and have no way of affecting it. We become keenly aware of our bodies but can do very little with them.

When the plane lands and the seat belt sign is finally turned off, we get up from our seats and stretch our stiffened limbs. Like the dead rising from the grave. Air travel puts us in a time warp and produces a temporary death or suspension of consciousness, and travel in the present age is unthinkable without the airplane. The greatest appeal of air travel lies in this suspended state of consciousness. A stifling sense of being confined and stifled alternates with a pure sense offiberation. And we notice that we are in that last intermediate zone — between life and death. This experience shows us the meaning of travel in its most concentrated form. The traveler can be said to both belong and not belong to his or her present location. The traveler is partially living and partially dead, always in-between.”

– Yusuke Minami, Travel and Time. “On Kawara. Whole and parts.”