On the first floor of the Barbaratoren the ticking of the clock high up on the tower can be clearly heard. Eternity here is divided without respite into fractions of innumerable seconds. And it is here that the sculptor Sjaak van Rhijn attempts, in parallel to the inexorable ticking of the passing of time, to render the time visible through the image: an installation titled “Projecting into time”. In order to achieve this he works with light projections in combination with a bloc of rough slate (Slate is a grey or black rock of fine grain originating from mountainous regions, made up from hardened clay, split under pressure and thus maintaining the stratified aspect of clay).

Until then, the artist cut, sawed and engraved thus adding through mechanical manipulation certain aspects of shape to his material, whereas here in this tower it is the stone itself and its stratification derived over millions of years, which is the form of its expression.

In the half-light an unreal sensation of weightlesness grips you which like the experience of time and of timelessness makes one reflect and speculate on what might be behind our sensorial perception, on the state of being and of the being.

Why is there something rather than nothing? And what is the meaning of what “is”.

Gert A.M. Taken, 1995