Casio Pay

Casio Pay is an installation by Cezary Bodzianowski. It consists of a monitor and a screening on view in two different rooms located at the opposite ends on the first floor of the Foundation building. The videos show Bodzianowski doing meaningless actions in the streets of Naples and at the Fondazione. The monitor and the screening represent the opposite poles of a magnet and mark the boundaries of a space run through by tensions and energies, in which the motion flows naturally and without interruption from the inside to the outside of the building.

The invitation card chosen by the artist features the image of a hand holding a pocket watch. The watch is closed and embellished with the image of a man driving a motorbike. The title is a play on words that ironically associates the english word “pay” with the name of the popular brand of watches. Bodzianowski wants to draw our attention on the fact that we are all subjected to the fast pace imposed on us by our society. We make a frenzied use of time, driven by the economic conception that time should never be “wasted”. But what exactly does “wasting time” mean? And who’s paying for the time we waste? Is the time wasted the one we take away from productive activities or from our daily routine? And wouldn’t in this case the waste be more of a reappropriation of that same time but in a different form, rather than the other way round?

In his almost absurd actions, Bodzianowski considers time as a flexible matter which can be continually manipulated, moved elsewhere, taken away from a given situation and turned into something different. In each of his actions documented in the videos the artist works out different possibilities to measure time through the simplest movements. The rooms located between the ones displaying the monitor and the screening represent a void: available space and time to be filled by the visitors. Starting from the consideration that we live in a reality ruled by a rigid and conventional idea of time, the artist suggests the possibility, if not the need, to develop a parallel reality marked by a different, more flexible and open pace.

All images Courtesy Fondazione Morra Greco, Napoli
© Danilo Donzelli