Silences

Starting from 1969, On Kawara began a project entitled One Million Years (Past and Future), consisting of a systematic countdown of dates: for Past he used dates between the year 998, 031 B.C. and 1969 (when he first began the project), the dates occurring between the years 13,293 and 19,155 are Future. Initially transcribed in ten bound volumes of typewritten lists, the sequences were limited to the physical volume of a predefined object. From 1980 forward, the project was copied and extended, and took on sonorous form starting in 1999, (the one on show in the exhibition) in which the dates are enumerated first in one direction and then the other. This new presentation gave rise to several successive editions of CDs. 2002’s version, published by the gallery Akira Ikeda includes the recorded reading of a sequence defined this time, by the reading’s duration, i.e., 24 hours. A systematic nature that refers the artistic act back to its most minimal inscribes his work in a kind of universality.

One Million Years (Past and Future), 2002
Sound recording
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes

Kariya, Japan, 1932 – Lives and works in New York