The Gift / Gaven
For the December 2019 installation of Insignificants, Tim Flohr Sørensen (at the University of Copenhagen) exhibited a gift: the contents of a paper bag hanging from his door on the day that he had the first exhibition launch in the Insignificants project. This is (obviously) a gift. However, Tim did not know who donated the gift, and he was not sure how to reciprocate (even after reading Mauss carefully). So, Tim was left to speculate, and speculation took at turn in different directions than planned (as it should - otherwise it wouldn't be speculation).
To accompany each of his monthly Insignificants exhibits, Tim creates a bookmark. While you will find an image of the one that he made for The Gift / Gaven, the text is repeated here.
“You get lost out of a desire to be lost. But in the place called lost strange things are found.”
(Rebecca Solnit)
Exterior
photograph of building with graffiti flattened
fake Christmas tree crumpled up food bag
bag w/ fabric straps
Interior
soft drink can
3.5” floppy desk
two keys in a keyring
empty bottle of Methadone
broken, slightly burnt lighter
plastic bag, containing a used condom.
Many people assume coincidence simply requires a shrug of the shoulders, bland indifference, and a measure of self-sufficient carelessness towards the world around us. That is not the case.
Coincidence is an ability to be learned, cultivated and maintained. To be incidental, one must be systematic, rigorous, because coincidence is conditioned on a dilemma in terms of method:
must my observations be incidental, or
must the object of my observation be incidental?
Occasionally, coincidence is a gift, arriving in the form of an incidental object when you least expect it.
To see other installations from Insignificants, follow these links:
For more information about Tim and his work, check out these links:
