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Time Upside-Down


By Marie Ørstedholm

Bulgar Time is what American artist Viktor IV (1929-1986) called his time universe. With his strange clocks he turned the time upside-down and in a teasing way put a question mark against modern people’s relation to time.


Backwards Precision
None of Victor IV Bulgar clocks follows the conventions of an ordinary clock. The numerals are placed in reverse order, dislocated, upside-down, or inverted – and the hands are always moving backwards. Nevertheless, the Bulgar clocks are as precise as ordinary watches and they are functioning just as irreproachably. They just demand that we set aside an extra moment to comprehend the principle behind them and read the time accordingly; that we take our time to understand time.

The Magic of the Moment
Victor IV’s new thinking of time is not only a showdown with the classic linear conception of time, but also his original way of pointing a finger of scorn against the tyranny of time. With his clocks he challenges us to stop and reflect on how we let hours, minutes, and seconds rule our lives in an eternal rush towards new future goals. Live in the moment, was the message behind Bulgar Time. Victor IV summarized it in distorted sentences such as "These are the good old days" and "The time is always now".

The King of Amstel River
For a quarter of a century Viktor IV practiced his philosophy of life in Amsterdam on his unique houseboat with extensions, animals, and a garden – and not least with his Danish wife Ina Munck. As an artist he is especially known for his symbolic paintings on wood – the icons – and for his many thousands of logbook sheets, diary notes made as graphic works of art. He changed his nom-de-guerre several times and it was as "Bulgar" that he invented the time of the same name in the late 1970’s. Bulgar Time became the centre of rotation of his philosophy. In a letter from 1986 he writes: "I have become the clock and I can dance all its movements. I am the clock both as a man, as a form, as a work of art, and as an artist. Product and man rolled into one".


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