We're Killing Time, Time's Killing Us

Tishkov's installation, "We're Killing Time, Time's Killing Us" (2003)

is made of glass, sand, metal, sculptures, plastic, a side table,

a stuffed animal, and a motor (170dX240h).

"In his unfinished text number seven, "The Sorrowful Remnants

of Events," Aleksandr Vvedensky wrote: "Everything breaks down

into its last fatal parts. Time eats away at the world.

I don't " What was he going to say next?

I think he meant to say, "I don't eat away at time."

That's how the idea of an installation dedicated to time came up.

A couple, sitting at a table, are just killing time - they're eating

away at time. Then time eats away at them - time kills them.

The piece has to change with the passage of time, and so that's

how the idea of a kind of installation I called
'temporal' came up. Every day, every hour, even every

moment of its existence it doesn't look the same as it did before.

At first the couple were killing Time, then Time will kill them.

That's the way Sand and Time work. So now both we and

the sand itself are being swallowed up by the
penetrating azure light of Time - you can't even see

any distinguishing features through the glass."

At first the sand falls on the table, as if it were supposed to be

eaten; then it starts covering up the figures of the man and

woman, and gets almost all the way to the neck by the end

of the exhibit on June 23rd. The sand weighs 2 = tons.

The inner glass is triple-layered, while the outer glass is

"magic," darkening to the color of the Lethe,

the river of oblivion. It darkens to 95% opacity and grows

translucent again in 10 minutes, and the sand falls

ceaselessly. A special built-in vacuum carries small amounts

of sand up to the well on top, so that it doesn't need to be

refilled by hand. For the first time anywhere in the world

you can see this glass in action! Everything changes

every day, every hour,every minute, and never repeats itself.