Lu Zhang was awarded the Photoworks Prize at last year's London College of Communication Photography Degree Show for her project One Minute Piece
This is a conceptual art project of time, which is completed by an instruction of interaction with participants to experience time personally.
According to a statement of time from St Augustine, “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.” Therefore, it is a direct and instant way to be sensed by this experiment instead of description. The experiment aims to visualize experienced one minute as being termed real-duration, which is based on the differences from individuals.
However, the invention of timekeeper has visualized the time as a digital and accurate method, which is almost, convinced human beings that we are taking control of time. The participants of this experiment will follow the instruction, not rely on any tools to mark time.
The one-minute piece (1) is a series of long exposure sky pieces, which are using the relationship between photography and time, based on transformation of experienced time to visualized colour. The concept of one minute is regarded as medium in terms of different time in various situations in which is depending upon sensation of time from different people.
The one-minute piece (2) is a video, which will record the whole process to represent the individual difference in order to deliver a concept of relative time. And time doesn’t flow in a uniform rate; each individual is unable to remain with the same feeling in one-minute interval.
The poetic instruction valorized the idea rather than its physical instantiations. In comparison with numbers on watch, the time exists as an experience and poetic present. The project aims to arouse the interest that time is a mysterious thing and we know nearly nothing about it.
