Puck Wacki - ArtEZ Alumni Index

Silent Passage
A composition of four works that explore the metaphysical implications of a timekeeping device. By deconstructing and recontextualizing these instruments, each piece challenges viewers to explore alternative perceptions and measurements of the time passing, beyond the Western utilitarian concept of the 24-hour clock. We often perceive time as clock time, a construct created by humans as a tool to control and perfect. This understanding of time has made us servants to the clock, shaping our entire way of thinking into a linear pattern. As result, everything around us has been constructed in this linear manner, yet linear time is merely a construct designed to serve a capitalistic world. Time has become a boundary, and art should act as its liberation.

Ticking Shadows
In ‘Ticking Shadows’, a self-playing instrument translates binary data into graphical notation, played by candles. This work invites you to listen to time slowing down and presents a case against the Western concept of clock-time, which is a driver of utilitarian modes of being where everything you do must be useful and has to matter. The viewer always enters the piece at an unknown interval, making it impossible to fully witness the completion of the score.

Sound
Duration (in flux)
Metal, candles, nails, soundbox

Fugit irreparabile tempus
‘Fugit irreparabile tempus’ is a sound installation which consists of kitchen timers that are reprogrammed into new individual time sequences. These sequences represent elements in human life that have their own course of time like breathing, which happens approximately every four seconds. Therefore, the familiar numbers that indicate minutes and seconds here no longer have the same meaning. Listening to the individual timers going off, the viewer is able to hear their new individual time flow. Together they create chaos and composition through less perceivable rhythms that are still fundamentally present in human life.

Sound
Duration ~ 80 years
Wood, kitchen timers, metal, electronics

Transient [ ]
If nothing happens time still passes. It just seems to go slower. ‘Transient [ ]’ is an installation that visualizes the absence of time. A stack of sand is flowing on a platform creating a pile that indicates how much time has passed. This is a representation of when nothing has happened. When events do happen (such as movement) the platform on which the sand is falling vibrates and the material representing the absence of time dissolves.

The work represents the feeling of being connected to oneself and taking time to listen to the passing time. If you’re able to be in the moment long enough, the pile of sand is again being recreated and you have entered the transient absence of time.

Sound
Metal, sand, electronics, contact microphones.

Temporal whispers
‘Temporal whispers’ is a sound performance where the viewer listens to the synchronisation and desynchronisation of e timers. This gives the viewer the possibility to listen and sync with the sound or desynchronise by leaving and not knowing how much time still has to pass.

Performance, sound
Duration: ~ sequences; in a state of flux
E timers, contact microphones

ARTIST BIO

Puck Wacki is a multidisciplinary artist based in Arnhem (NL). In her artistic practice Wacki questions the human perception of human-made systems and machines, such as time. In her research, she dissects and manipulates the machine to discover something about the systems that mediate our life and experiences within the human habitat. Through sound and installation she highlights the tension between the spiritual and the technical, unveiling the more poetic side or a different perspective than what the machine offers. Wacki is part of Wasem, a platform for experimental sound art and performances. Wasem is a collective of 2 artists giving a stage in Arnhem to artist/ creators to present their experiments and projects to a curious audience.