One Million Years, installation view at David Zwirner, 2009. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York
TAKE PART IN ONE MILLION YEARSTwo of the most important projects in the Festival are invitations for you to take part in the creation of artworks by leading artists On Kawara and Hamish Fulton. On Kawara’s One Million Years is an ongoing epic work conceived by the artist in 1969, that documents the passage of chronological time. This 20-volume work is a typewritten record of one million years – Past and Future. Biblical in scale, each volume contains 2,068 pages. This exhibition is a unique opportunity for you to read from the work, and participate in the extraordinary project to complete a public reading of the entire One Million Years. The first reading of One Million Years took place in 1993 at Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Since then live readings have been performed across the world, with a man and a woman alternating the reading of Past and Future dates together. Each new reading continues in numerical order from the previous session, until all the years are read. Watch a video of participants reading at David Zwirner Gallery, New York in 2009 here. For the exhibition at BALTIC we are looking for men and women to read in 90-minute slots together. Each day, four time slots are available, for the duration of the two-month exhibition. You can participate in one session, or even come back regularly to continue reading. If you want to read with a friend of the opposite gender, you can book slots together. It is essential to book your place/s in advance here. One Million Years enables us to grasp time itself in the physical act of reading the dates aloud. It powerfully condenses our entire human history to only a few pages, and an average human life to a few lines.
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Hamish Fulton: Slowalk For the finale of AV Festival 12, this leading British artist devises one of his legendary slow walks for Newcastle. Since the early 1990s he has completed over 30 group walks across the world. Fulton’s slow walks are mass participation events, bringing hundreds of people together to walk very slowly in silence as a meditative experience. For AV Festival, the artist leads a group walk on a landmark post-industrial site near the River Tyne. Participants are both the art and the audience. Over 18s only, advance booking essential here. |
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