…We create opportunities for exchange, visibility, reflection, and guidance to aid in your creative process. Our annual events are organized by Temporal Choreographies (TC).

Objects expand beyond modern concepts of autonomy, entering a field of related networks of agency that create and aid temporal choreographies. If modernism was defined by the object in itself – autonomous, separate and outside of this contextual world – the contemporary object is in effect embedded in a flux of time, constantly passing. In this way, Butkute’s process involves sculpture as performance, performance as object, and space as a symbolic constellation that relates to our movement through the world.

In Heidegger’s famous metaphysical essay “The Thing”, an object can be understood only in relation to its use.1 His famous example is that of a vase: defined not by the material that forms the vase but by the negative space that allows the material to enact the verb of containing. Spatiality is thus already built into the definition of the vase and so is the “nearness” of ourselves to this object. Only the vase – which is of a certain proportion in relation to the body and which can be held and can contain matter – is considered an object worthy of such definition.

When it comes to the concept of Dasein in relation to objects as equipment, Heidegger looks to the hammer. This tool is defined as “ready-to-hand” because its shape is adapted to the human hand. It is named and exists as an extension of the hand and its reason-for-being relates to the anthropos.2 The hammer comprises various material components, but what makes it “ready-to-hand” is the ability to use it to further our own constructions. The tool as an extension of the hand is not unidirectional: although we control what the tool is used for, it also dictates the shape and form of our hand during its use.

text by Angels Miralda / 2023

1. Martin Heidegger, 1949. “The Thing,” In Bremen Lectures, (https://www.beyng.com/pages/en/BremenLectures/TheThing.html)
2. Eternalised, 2021. “Ready-to-Hand and Present-at-Hand”, (https://eternalisedofficial.com/2021/02/02/ready-to-hand-and-present-at-hand-heidegger/)