The Measuring of Time

© The Measuring of Time (Laura Grisi, 1969)

The Measuring of Time

Artist Laura Grisi counts grains of sand in the desert to measure the passage of time. A task with no clear end, an endless repetitive action. The camera spirals around her, slowly revealing her figure, a landscape, the action, a cosmos, reminiscent of Robert Smithson’s film Spiral Jetty (1970). Where Smithson’s work imprints a sense of permanence on nature, Grisi emphasises the ephemeral touch of the body: attuned to energies that are alternately physical and intimate, scientific and spiritual.