Schreibzeit

Hanne Darboven worked on the 32-volume publication with the systematic title ‘Schreibzeit’ (‘Writing Time’) from 1975 to 1999. Darboven meticulously designed every detail of this remarkable book beforehand, including the variously-sized types of paper. The work was created as a monumental montage. The artist ‘composed’ her work, drawing on quotations from literary, philosophical and historic texts and musical annotations. ‘Schreibzeit’ cites passages from Hölderlin, Valéry, Rilke, Baudelaire, Brecht, Sartre, Heidegger and many others. Darboven’s calendrical calculations also integrated aspects from everyday life: long series of checksums of days, months and years calculated according to a fixed system. The artist sought to suggest continuity in historical events and demonstrate that historical reflection is always shaped by the present. Or, as Darboven once asked: “Is there time without history?” Darboven regards the artwork as a construction that is the result of analysis, calculation and planning. The notion of ‘time’ is the most important conceptual aspect of her work.