It is not nothing that will remain, but rather
24 hours of “time” –and if you will, time woken and
worked through. There does not remain nothing, or one could better say,
it is not “time” that remains, but rather “duration.”
And even “duration” doesn’t seem to be the same as
“time.” If one could describe “time” as something
which moves horizontally, “duration” appears to me to leave
in all directions, thus a structure that expands in the horizontal,
as well as the vertical and into space itself.
For me deleting is a poetic, contemplative and equally a political process.
Poetic insofar as it takes things away or hides them and lengthens the
texture in a pure space of imagination, which is structured less by
a “previous presence,” rather much more by an “absence.”
Contemplative as repetitive, lasting, time woken through, as to bring
it forth and set it down - then as remembered – and similar to
the work of mourning in this experience of time.
Political, insofar as the development of the deletion process was inspired
by Adorno’s concept of “instrumental reason” or by
Martin Buber’s category of the “Ich-Es.” That is,
deletion represents a small, particular attempt at letting specific
movements – of accumulating, systematizing, recycling, thus of
gaining power and forming knowledge by collecting data – move
into the background in favor of a strategy of deleting/taking away/
withdrawing/hiding.
(Notes, Christoph Korn)