Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: "A Crack in the Hourglass" | Art21 "Extended Play"

- I think that the monuments
that are most interesting

are the monuments that either disappear,

question themselves,

that complicate some of these stories

that we tell ourselves.

(siren wailing)

I have for a long time

proposed a more anti monumental approach,

an approach that is more

of a platform for people
to self represent.

I got COVID in early
March here in New York.

It was pretty bad for me, I have asthma.

It was humbling to feel this
incapability to breathe.

I felt that a lot of
stories that I was hearing

had to do with family members

who would go into a hospital, sick,

and you could not go with them,

two weeks later they were dead

and you couldn't even go to their funeral.

As a Mexican, I think that
we think a lot about death

and all the rituals, the toasts

and the things that we do to have closure

and to bid farewell are critical

to our survival as a community.

And that could not happen.

The Brooklyn Museum is
working to make connections

between this artwork
and the communities here

in New York to create a way

for people to be able to come
together to remember our loss.

- People don't really talk
about death in Chinese culture.

It's seen as very superstitious

and kind of might bring on
more death or more bad luck.

Regardless of the pandemic,
that's always a thing.

And I think with the pandemic,
people are very scared

or very apprehensive to talk about it.

My aunt passed away this past March.

She was our everything, essentially.

It was hard for us to kind
of process and even recognize

that my aunt died because
like the last time

we saw her was the Lunar
New Year, right before.

One thing you do during a funeral

for Chinese people is
that you burn joss paper.

So, there are these paper mache sculptures

that are representative of material goods.

So it could be a home, a car, iPhone

Because we didn't get to experience that,

we didn't have like a
physical space to talk

about the memories and
then have the comfort

of just like physically being with people

that you're close with
to just hopefully get

to the next day without
being so sad about it.

- My studio and I, we
decided to make an artwork

that would allow people to come together

and see a live event.

We thought that it was important
that it'd be something live

that somebody from any
time zone could log into

and experience, together
with their loved ones.

A Crack in the Hourglass is
basically a robot arm controlled

by a custom made software.

You send a photograph of
a loved one or a family

or friend over a website called
acrackinthehourglass.net.

It gets analyzed and
it very slowly is drawn

by dropping sand from an hourglass.

As this image is appearing,

there's two cameras that are
broadcasting the action live.

So when you participate,

you can invite friends to log
onto the website and see it.

The work is the result of a collaboration

between people at my studio,

the work comes out of discussion,

comes out of a desire from
all of us to do something

that would allow us to, I
guess not feel so lonely.

When you enter the hall
at the Brooklyn Museum

and you see all of these faces,

you notice that there is
an exchange of glances

around the room.

Most of the people in the
portraits are looking back at you.

Most people choose
photographs where the subject

is not distant or looking away

but they're looking
straight at the camera.

There's a moment which
the image tilts slowly

and gravity pulls the sand down

making the portrait disappear

and recovering all the sand to be recycled

into new portraits.

All the portraits, so far,
hundreds of them are all made

with the same small amount of sand.

And for me, that was really important

because it was a sense
of universal solidarity

around this and a sense of connection.

Whenever I'm optimistic

I think that there is a sense of empathy,

and there is a sense

that this could happen to
anybody anywhere in the planet

to an extent unites us and unites us

in understanding something
that's invisible.

Disappearance, sometimes the
ephemeral helps you remember.