E 18 De-Kalo’s artistic strategy can also be understood in light of the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s conceptualization of duration (durée). Bergson sought to question the mechanical, scientific conception of time as a measurable continuum divided into discrete seconds, minutes, and hours. In contrast to the understanding of time as a continuously forwardmoving linear axis, Bergson presented time as a “vital impulse” (élan vital) – a qualitative continuum on which moments are not separate from one another, but rather interpenetrate, carrying the memory of what preceded them. De-Kalo’s video works conceptualize time in a manner reflective of Bergson’s approach. By splitting the screen and suspending the projection of the filmed sequences, the same moment does not appear only once in the process of a forward-moving temporal unfolding. Rather, it resurges repeatedly, so that the viewer simultaneously observes different moments of the same event: a moment that has already begun, a moment that begins anew, and a moment that continues to evolve. The result is an experience of time not as a continuum moving in a single direction, but as composed of multiple, interpenetrating layers. In this sense, De-Kalo’s artistic strategy echoes Bergson’s understanding of how memory unfolds. For Bergson, the present is never severed from the past, since the past exists in the subject’s personal and historical memory, which is imported forward into the future. The present is constituted between these two temporal moments. No longer a mathematical or geometric point of origin that structures clear schemas, time is constituted through the subject’s continuum of perception. This perceptual experience is ongoing yet contains the potential to be transformed through the unexpected movement of streams of consciousness. Similarly, in De-Kalo’s works, each present moment contains within it the memory of previous moments. The different camera shots function, in a sense, as layers of time: the image appearing in one frame is echoed in the other frames, so that past, present and future coexist in the same visual sphere. When this structure appears in relation to architectural images, it acquires additional meaning. Architecture is typically perceived as a stable spatial structure experienced from a single vantage point along a linear temporal axis. De-Kalo, however, invites us to view this structure as an experience constructed and evolving over time through repetitions, memories, and recurring movements of the gaze. The viewer is no longer observing space from a single vantage point but rather experiences it as a progression of interpenetrating moments. In this sense, one could state that DeKalo’s work visually expresses Bergson’s idea of time as duration. Rather than presenting time as measurable and linear, she portrays it as a vital, dynamic and layered duration, in which different moments exist simultaneously and shape a complex experience of memory, space, and consciousness.
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