DISTANT SUFFERING LXVVI
i.d. of different sets of times
Joep Bremmers & Hans Overvliet
DISTANT SUFFERING LXVVI
i.d. of different sets of times Joep Bremmers & Hans Overvliet
Run, run ever faster—not to reach a goal, but to maintain the status quo, simply to stay in the same place. Hartmut Rosa In Beschleunigung – Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne Suhrkamp Verlag | 2005 | ISBN 978-3518293607
The cooperation between Joep&Hans
DISTANT SUFFERING LXVVI i.d. of different sets of times | 2026
Work Joep Bremmers Photographs of military cemeteries, captured on 120-format film, 20 ASA, Igor Polyakov/Polyfilm Ortho using a Mamiya Super 23 camera, and presented as 6 x 9 cm contact prints. Places Margraten | datum
works
Work | continuation Hans Overvliet Cyanotype* prints on 6 x 9 cm of a single bullet, casted with porcelain plaster; a set of two bullets casted with porcelain plaster; his left eye; *
Cyanotype prints are one of the oldest photographic printing techniques, invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel. Exhibited
Time
It took years for the shed belonging to Igor Polyakov in Lviv to develop the patina that now gives it a greenish hue. Between 1908 and 1922, Marcel Proust worked on In Search of Lost Time, only to realize, after 14 years, that everything revolves around ordinary life. ruimteCAESUUR, an independent exhibition space for contemporary art, has been active in Middelburg for over 30 years. The foundation stone of the Sagrada Família was laid on March 19, 1882; by the time the church is completed in 2030, 148 years will have passed. Rembrandt had to wait a lifetime for his poignant final self-portrait—dated September 1669—a work whose subject I have had the privilege of looking into the eyes of so many times at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Since February 2014—that is, for 12 years now—Russia has been engaged in the destruction of Ukraine as an autonomous administrative, political, and cultural entity. It is a destruction captured in images that, every single evening, come crashing down upon us in HD, 4K, or other formats, at a speed and in a volume that can only be described, in oldfashioned terms, as dizzying.
These images are mostly captured on mobile phones by the very people who narrowly escaped becoming victims. They form an endless stream of footage, which pundits—night after night, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, second after second, bit after bit—attempt to interpret through a tsunami of words. And upon this, other pundits offer their own commentary. At the very same speed. Accompanied by the same relentless flow of words, illustrated by yet another stream of images—now recycled, and thus doubled. Occasionally, a different stream might be captured elsewhere for a brief moment, but a few days later, we are back in Ukraine. This echo chamber of business models only functions when we cease to trust our internal clock and rely exclusively on an external one. In 1991, the Dutch philosopher Arnold Cornelis wrote about this in his trilogy on what he coined as delayed time. He describes how we find ourselves trapped between the rapid, external time of society and the slow, internal time of our own developmental process and self-regulation. Cornelis argues that the faster the technological and social world around us chan-
ges, the more we must slow down our internal clock. If we fail to do so, we lose our capacity for self-regulation, leading to stress, anxiety, anger, and sadness. Only by consciously slowing down and making time for reflection—what he calls pre-thinking—can space emerge for genuine innovation and human growth. The French cultural theorist, philosopher, urbanist, and architect Paul Virilio (1932–2018), in his theory of dromology (the study of speed and its influence on society), analyses speed as a defining factor in contemporary society. Due to technological advancements, digitalization, and globalization, the speed of—and within—communication, transport, and decision-making is cumulatively increasing. We are left with less time to process information critically, which means we are increasingly unable to fully grasp events; consequently, independent thought comes under pressure. This results in a loss of control and a decline in human freedom, reflection, and responsibility. Conversely, it creates new forms of social inequality.
Igor Polyakov has given a material dimension to these two approaches to the dichotomy of speed versus slowness. In a small shed near Lviv, in his war-torn Ukraine, he gathers silver, mixes in gelatine and chemicals, and—under a red safelight—applies a layer of light-sensitive emulsion, strip by strip, onto the base material used for 120-format film. In this way, he produces negative film by hand—known as Polyfilm Ortho3—with a sensitivity of approximately ISO 20 (or ASA 20). This implies that, when taking photographs, long to very long shutter speeds must be employed; much like in the early days of photography, around 1850. The size of the negatives—ranging from 6 x 4.5 cm to 6 x 9 cm, or even panoramic formats (such as 6 x 12 cm, or up to 6 x 24 cm)—allows for the creation of usable contact prints. This, too, serves as a nod to the mid-nineteenth century. Igor produces a maximum of 30 rolls of 120-format film per month in this manner. Should you happen to acquire one of his rolls, you will naturally take your time to carefully consider the subject matter and composition of the image you wish to capture. This is especially true given that—
depending on the negative format used—the number of exposures per roll is extremely limited; for instance, a 6 x 9 cm negative format yields only 8 photographs. In doing so, Igor—whether intentionally or not— takes a stand against the endless stream of digital images that we keep on our phones or entrust to the cloud, only for them to be pilfered by the oligarchs behind the latest, rapidly evolving technological business model: AI. Igor makes me newly aware of my own carelessness in how I look—or fail to look—and in what I see—or fail to see. Interestingly, there is an inherent contradiction in the shelf life of his films. Once you have finally managed—after much effort and a long wait—to become the proud owner of one of his film reels, you have only two months to work with it . . . In a country that calls up every man of his age to take his place at the front, this man—through his autonomous stance and the actions that accompany it—effectively rejects the digital age. Paradoxically, thanks to
digitized globalization, he serves as the focal point of a community that is gently subversive in its tendency to slow things down. Could this, perhaps, be an ultimate form of liberation? The stream of images depicting the destruction of his Ukraine suddenly comes to a standstill within my soul, brought about by this very pause. At last, in all simplicity, I feel I can once again grasp and sense what Igor and his people endure, day in and day out. It is precisely through this stillness—through this single, isolated image—that an all-encompassing clarity emerges. The transition from consumer to producer is the result: the ephemeral gives way to the materiality that Igor drew my attention to through his attitude and actions. Joep Bremmers discovered this materiality and spoke of it with such enthusiasm to me—so deeply moved by the man, his attitude, his work, and the place from which he operates—that a project naturally took shape. It resonated with Joep’s own passion—analogue photography— as well as with my body of work, DISTANT SUFFERING.
Presented here is the result of this collaboration.
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Arnold Cornelis | Delayed Time Revenge of the Spirit as a Philosophy of the Future Boom | ISBN 9789072258038 | October 14, 2000 Paul Virilio & Mark Polizzotti Speed and Politics, new edition (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents) ISBN 978158435040813 | October 2006 Polyfilm Ortho | https://polyfilms.pp.ua/
Middelburg Friday, 16 October 2026 dedicated to Igor Polyakov | LvivUkraine Hans Overvliet
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Joep Bremmers Hans Overvliet | DISTANT SUFFERING | the project Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL, about the oeuvre after a studio visit: The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained. It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art. www.hansovervliet.com Thanks Willy van Houtum | text corrections
DISTANT SUFFERING LXVVI
i.d. of different sets of times
Joep Bremmers & Hans Overvliet