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Before the match, everyone is briefed except one player. The referee announces forty-minute halves out loud, and then plays twenty. If the player says the game felt short, he is told the clock must be wrong. He is never told otherwise.
Wall text, Time Thief—Half Time Project, 2008
Installation view: Good Situation
Kodama Gallery Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
I stole someone's playing time.
Boxing
3 min × 3 rounds → 1 min 30 sec × 3 rounds
Soccer
80 min → 40 min
Basketball
16 min → 8 min
Time is stolen from one person. In a soccer game, a boxing match and a basketball game, one player is not told that the match has been cut to half its usual length. Everyone else knows—the referee, the opponent, the coach, the other players—and everyone else keeps it that way. On a full-size pitch, each forty-minute half is played in twenty: eighty minutes of football becomes forty.
In every case it is the playing time that is taken, and only that. The rounds still number three, and the half-time break still runs its usual fifteen minutes—the only honest stretch of time in the match.
Instruction sheet distributed to all participants except one player, Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Briefing before the match, Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
No signal is ever given. Iikawa does not step onto the pitch, and no cue travels around the field. The whole thing is held up by the players and the staff, minute by minute: the referee calling forty-minute halves out loud, everyone running as though nothing were odd, somebody ready with “the clock must be wrong” if the question comes. Dozens of people, working to keep one person's ordinary afternoon intact.
Nothing was needed to deceive him except his trust that the people around him were telling the truth.
On a school trip, forty of us to a room. The days were run to a schedule and everyone kept to it.
An hour after lights out, once the room had fallen asleep, I shouted at the top of my voice: “Morning! Get up!” It was not yet midnight. All forty got up. The bedding was folded away at astonishing speed, and everyone was already heading for the washroom to wash their faces. The teacher, coming round on the nightly check that we were asleep, could not work out what on earth had happened in the middle of the night.
I was astonished at how loosely people hold on to time, and at the same time I found the situation funny.
I remember the shoot. The cameraman, the staff, and every player except number 23—everyone who had been let in on it was tense about handling the time and keeping their answers straight. The match had been halved, and yet to us it felt a little long. Out on the pitch, all that was happening was an ordinary game of football.
A prank on television ends with the reveal, and the reveal is what it was after: the reaction of the person who was fooled. Nothing is revealed here. The player hears the whistle, walks back to the bench, and goes home believing he played a full match. The work is not interested in his surprise, because there is none.
Production still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Half Time Project—Soccer《時間泥棒—サッカー》, 2008
Installation view: Good Situation
Kodama Gallery Osaka, Osaka, Japan
Single-channel video projection, color, sound, 55 min
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Video still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
It is interested in the fact that half a match was removed from a person's life without his knowing, and that no one gave it back.
In the gallery, you and the player on screen are given the same stretch of time: the match runs from the first whistle to the last, and you both go through all of it. To him it was an ordinary full match, and nothing in his manner suggests the smallest doubt. You can measure the time; he cannot. To the people who knew, it ran long.
Three lengths of time occupy one duration. Where the missing half went is the question the work leaves open.
Video still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Production still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Video still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Video still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Production still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Production still: Half Time Project—Soccer, 2008
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Half Time Project—Boxing《時間泥棒—ボクシング》, 2008
Installation view: Good Situation
Kodama Gallery Osaka, Osaka, Japan
Single-channel video projection, color, sound, 10 min
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Video still: Half Time Project—Boxing, 2008
Half Time Project—Basketball《時間泥棒—バスケットボール》, 2008
Installation view: Good Situation
Kodama Gallery Osaka, Osaka, Japan
Single-channel video projection, color, sound, 15 min
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Video still: Half Time Project—Boxing, 2008
Time Thief—Half Time Project《時間泥棒—Half Time Project》, 2008
Installation view: Good Situation
Kodama Gallery Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Three-channel video installation, monitors, color, sound, looped,
durations variable
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist
The project began with a single trial, a futsal game, made and shown in 2007, in the years before the Decorator Crab series began.
Iikawa had already made a clock. The Clock for Practice of Time is a day's worth of footage played through, every day, telling no one the hour. Both works are made from the same material—how loosely we actually know the time, and how each place seems to keep one of its own—and they run in opposite directions. That work hands you a way of feeling time pass. This one takes time away from a person who is feeling it pass, and never tells him.
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