Time, She Said / VRIJEME JE

by Nadija Mustapić
2024

single-channel video installation (video, 5.1 surround sound, text on adhesive vinyl on gallery floor) /
experimental film (PAL, HD 1080p, color, 15 min 19 sec, 5.1 surround sound)

Exerpt from text about this work by Ivana Meštrov:
“…Today, as vital ocean currents diminish, coral reefs disappear, oceans and our bodies acidify, glaciers melt, atmospheric tensions rise, storms intensify, floods multiply, rivers swell, and sea levels rise, she says – it is time.  

Time for something seemingly distant in our deeply individualized perception of the environment to become once again collective, worthy of preservation, co-existence, attention, and, above all, closeness. ”

TEXT IN THE INSTALLATION:
Time, She Said 

If my time keeps speeding up, yours would dehydrate.  
I can’t even imagine such changes.  
I slow it down so that the flow records its course in the deep memory of stone. So it sways the joints of limestone bones.  
When drought arrives, the bone marrow will carry the cries of underground rivers into a frequency of patience.  
It will linger long on the ground, beneath the stagnant reflections of the sky.  
Persistently, the sky will bring down the rains.  
Waters will surge. Depths will rise to the surface and thunder through new cracks in waterfalls.  
They will overflow into oases of water words – wild rivers, unbordered seas, intuitive amniotic fluids.  
In my early time, I used to collect them, lost in sentences about tides, completely unaware that only waters truly know about the drowning of an entire era.  
In my deaf time, I overvalued the future with fairy-tale moments. 

I slow down time. Maybe it’s not too late?  
I float with my neck and breath above the surface – like a signpost out of reach, with lifted soles and an ease of a tiny grasshopper.  Downstream, the foam will carry away the peeled-off guilt.  It will burst among the bubbles. And then it will simply disappear.  I ask, who will fill the gentle currents that vanish tomorrow? Who will drift with outstretched fingers on the lost present? 

I save all my waters.  
Desert waters, compressed in salty grains of ancient sand, arctic waters, freed from cracked glaciers, timeless flows of recycled, evaporated, collected, absorbed, glued under hardened crystals, spilled over vast earthy depressions…  
To the cycle that already loses its persistent rhythm drop by drop, I extend my palm.  
When your time arrives, palm by palm, one ocean will be preserved. 

I save these waters for you, still unsuccessfully.  
I watch and listen to deep time.  
Perhaps in it are instructions for justice towards the past.  
If I approach the anonymous underground waters, I will understand the word Tomorrow better, for they conduct its universality.  
Ultimately, we will only save what we understand, because what we understand, we come to love. 

We are already on the threshold of your time.  
Cities have accelerated their approach beneath the ocean.  
Your time speeds up along with them; it will dry out when collisions occur.  
I can’t imagine such changes.  
Yet, deep time says that deserts were once great sea surfaces and that waters will come again.  
It is necessary to reflect the celestial frequency of patience back into the dry bones. 

I save all my waters for you. It’s hopeless, probably, but dignified.  
How else?  
I want you to know, they taught me to desire less and to love more. 

Nadija Mustapić