Edyta Baum

@edyta_at_large

Edyta is currently undertaking the MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art.

“The core of my practice revolves around repetition — the propagation, dissemination, and mutation of ideas as they travel across media.

In this work I explore the spatial and linguistic location of time: the present, and the past. Over three minutes I repeat two words, “is” and “was.” Facing the camera, I say “is.” Turning my head to the right (which appears left to the audience), I say “was.” The simple gesture invokes English’s spatial metaphor of time — the past positioned on the left, the future to the right. Each utterance marks both presence and loss: the present dissolves into the past, over and over, repeated yet never the same.

I projected the video onto a concrete wall — a material emblem of permanence. Yet, as the projection was re-recorded at an offset frame rate, the image shifted: colours appeared in a black-and-white video. Extracted frames were reprinted in UV on aluminium, making reflection of light and potentially the audience itself part of the work. Through each translation — speech to video, wall to camera, frame to print — the information mutates, transforms. Some of it is lost. New information accrues. Repetition becomes difference.

The work situates itself between language and embodiment, between chronos and kairos. It speaks to Deleuze’s “time-image,” where cinema renders time itself visible, and to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of temporality as lived through gesture and orientation.”

Locating the Tense-Past in English Language, 2024-25, Video, Projection, Re-recording and UV Print on Aluminum