The Weight of the Temporary brings together the work of 25 artists with different perspectives, disciplines, and interests in an effort to explore human adaptation both to and through changing conditions, and living through the heaviness of a moment. 
While speaking with the artists in preparation for this exhibition, we often discussed ideas of consumption, the earth getting warmer, relationships with family and loved ones, childhood experiences, traditions, womanhood, feminisms, death, even religion and its contemporary value, and the ways in which we all cope and unfold in our world(s). Whether it is a thought, a landscape, a home, a memory, an exchange, a movement, or just our attention, the momentary aspect of things and events connects us all in impactful ways. 
The play on words in this exhibition’s title is reminiscent of Octavio Paz’s ideas in his book The Grammarian Monkey, where he speaks about fixity as a momentary quality and attempts to define what it means “to go to an end.” Paz plays incessantly with language and describes life as an ongoing search, a constant tug between movement and stillness, between the present and the headspace, between the specific goals in life and the uncertainty of the next instant. Similarly, the pieces that have come together in this exhibition remain tied by a continuous blending of 
the self with the other, 
the self with the outside, 
the self with a home, 
the self with history, 
the self with language, 
the self in movement, 
the self with nature, 
the self with itself,
the self within itself. 
The metaphysical opposition of weight and time coexist and thus evoke the notion of occupying two spaces simultaneously, like a musical instrument that slaps, a text that performs, a white noise image, an encounter without regard, space food as a sign of social upper mobility, shifting in a fixed landscape, noise emotions, and the list could go on. 
The vagueness of the terms, the finitude of the idea, the embedded cycle without an end…The temporary character of any ‘thing’ is correlated to its importance and to the question of how we measure it –is there in fact a better question? Certainly, the intersectional forces of race, class, gender, provenance, ability, influence, and experience will be definitive in the experience of being in the world. 

SONIC MUD 
Performance
Wednesday, August 21st, 6pm 
With Julia Elsas, Kenny Wollesen, Kirk Knuffke, and Mike Irwin. 
The instrument sculptures on display in The Weight of the Temporary were created during Elsas’ participation in the 2018-2019 New Jewish Culture Fellowship. For this fellowship, she reimagined a mysterious biblical instrument, the Ugav, through a series of ceramic sculptures. The Ugav is mentioned only four times in the Bible, including in the very first description of musical instruments (Genesis 4:21). Contemporary interpretations of the Ugav describe it either as a reed instrument or a stringed instrument. Possibilities include: pipe, bagpipe, end-blown flute, vertical flute, water organ, panpipe, lute, harp, viola da gamba, or simply, a love charm.
Julia Elsas considers the Sonic Sculptures to be fully realized when they are being played.
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