Deadline

Cheng-Yu Hsieh
Kai Ling Xue
Kristin Nelson
Mark Dudiak
Martin Budny
Winnie Wong
Curated by Sally Lee
Opening: Friday, August 1, 2003, 8pm
Sally Lee, who recently graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design has proposed Deadline, an exhibition of six artists explores the mysteries of deadlines, a concept only too familiar to students and artists alike!

Sally Lee, who recently graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design has proposed Deadline, an exhibition of six artists explores the mysteries of ‘deadlines’, a concept only too familiar to students and artists alike!

Every act has an undertone of fear and guilt, and the result of the act is the enjoyment and satisfaction of consumption, consuming time (e.g. watching TV). Deadline is to decode the intangible—time—to become tangible. Deadline becomes an everyday experience, in transit, in traffic, in work, in alarm clocks, that constantly reminds us to seize our time, and to grasp the timing in order to achieve a certain accomplishment. But whose time is it? Not mine, not yours. Time in history was measured by nature, weather, sand, and then became a science of numbers. If a deadline could be postponed to another deadline, what is ‘the deadline’? According these questions, time is converted into a line, which is constructed from point to point. But it is not a straight line; it could be curved, spiral or irregular, for everything is interrelated and interdependent on each other. It is a tool to assign us control over ourselves through a proper management of time.

Deadline is self-colonization. This self-control co-exists with the empowerment of those who provide the deadline. It is positive. It is political. Yet, what happens after the expectations—after the deadline? The invention of measured time inevitably leads to the fracture of our lives into packets, to be parceled and allocated; to different activities, each possessing its own deadline. The artists explore their concepts of the notion of deadlines.