Undermining the Immediacy

When the present seems to have abandoned the future, we need to observe the here and now more closely. These artists’ works are clear and detached, analytically precise and calm to present the state of affairs right now in all its complexity. In doing so, they undermine and refuse to comply with an omnipresent immediacy that manifests itself in the form of accelerated availability, speed, consumability, and instant legibility. Defying powerlessness and paralysis, the works address contemporary wars and their economic and political implications, dealing with climate change and socioeconomic power structures in various societies. Yet they invariably retain an awareness not only of our planetary present being permanently and repeatedly reconfigured from assorted constructions of the Real but also of the extent to which we are part of it all.

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Alexandre Khondji’s work Reservoir consists of a flexible water tank, an industrially manufactured product. It can be used in various locations, such as a domestic garden, under the fruit trees in a commercial orchard, between construction site containers, and even in a sufficiently large basement. This collapsible water storage tank stands for the scarcity of an element that was once held to be infinite: water.

The ancient Greek philosophers believed water was as infinite and immortal as air, earth, and fire—the other components of their four-element theory. And the portion of humankind that regarded itself as civilized followed this principle for millennia, until the mid-nineteenth century when French historian Jules Michelet declared that at least the oceans were finite and mortal like any other living organism. Today, water makes entire swathes of land uninhabitable through its absence in horrendous droughts or the no less terrifying torrents in periods of heavy rain. It has become a precious asset but also a very expensive one, and it makes sense that people should store it privately too, provided it can be kept reasonably fresh.