Samaré Gozal

Tre Vattenfall is a short videography project, inspired by the fluid and interchangeable relationship between time and space from an observer’s point of view. The inspiration for this project comes from a variety of directions, stretching from Wagner’s Parsifal to mathematical models of Spacetime developed at the turn of the previous century, where time and space come together into a single four-dimensional continuum. These ideas were brought forth most famously by Hermann Minkowski, Hendrik Lorentz, and, of course, Albert Einstein, and have continued to be developed, examined, and at times even re-considered and/or re-interpreted by many other scientists who followed.

I was also inspired by linguistic ideas of time “flying” or being “ahead” of time or “behind” the times, which give the speaker the idea of movement within an unspecified space. In cinema, movement to the right of the screen often implies development, and movement to the left of the screen implies regression, which also promotes the idea of time being a linear concept for the observer. This is, of course, not a universal rule, but nevertheless a prevalent visual phenomenon.

But the first thought that really made me consider the idea for Tre Vattenfall in the first place was the first act of the opera Parsifal, where the character Parsifal is told “Du siehst mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit.” The sentence equates space and time in a curious way, which inspired me to consider how the connection between the two might be reflected in a simple videography project.

As one observes the movement of water, the substance itself being formless and shapeless, when put in a linguistic context or in the confinement of a physical space, develops a form. At the same time the continuous transformation of shapes through movement becomes itself almost automatically subject to a timeline. The observer’s categorization and perception gives this seemingly shapeless and formless liquid not only shape and time, but also, perhaps, meaning.