Like a time journey captured on the wall
A five-metre-wide piece now hangs on a wall at Kolding School of Design. Created by Tom Klinkowstein, the work marks a milestone in his long-standing connection with Denmark’s design city.
On a grey Tuesday, around 50 people came together to meet both the artist and the artwork, and to explore the clusters of words that make up the piece – like a kind of time journey captured on the wall.
Associate Lecturer Barnabas Wetton welcomed the audience, saying:
- We are privileged in many ways in our lives. One of them is that we live in a time of great change, where technology, societal values and political trends are all in motion. This presents us with both enormous opportunities and challenges, as designers and as human beings. Tom, you have been a wonderful friend to us here at Kolding School of Design, and we are proud that you have shared your work with us and with everyone who wishes to explore it.
That the work has found its home in Kolding is the result of several years of collaboration between Tom Klinkowstein and Kolding School of Design. His connection to the school began more than a decade ago, where he encountered:
- …an openness, a curiosity and a willingness to collaborate that over the past ten years has evolved through shared projects and professional relationships between Kolding and New York, he says.
What has particularly interested Klinkowstein about Kolding School of Design is the way the school is pushing the boundaries of design. He highlights its focus areas – People, Planet and Play – as an unusual and compelling direction, linking design more closely to the defining questions of our time: how we live together, how we take responsibility for the world around us, and how play can open up new possibilities. For him, this connects the Danish design tradition with a more open and exploratory approach to design thinking.
At the opening, Klinkowstein explained that work on Not All Whens Are Time began in 2019 with a reflection on artificial intelligence and time. Could new technologies not only change the way we work, but also how we experience time?
Today, the work is not only about the future and technology, but also about life, experience and the questions that arise when we look back and try to understand what shapes a human life.
Klinkowstein does not expect audiences to approach the work as something to be immediately understood. On the contrary, he invited everyone to stand before it, let their gaze wander, and discover what cannot instantly be put into words.
With more than 7,000 words in Danish and German arranged in graphic compositions, there is plenty to explore:
- I invite everyone to explore the many words and find a place that draws your attention. I sincerely hope you will allow yourself to get a little lost. It is in that movement that new questions can arise – not only about what this work is about, but also about design, the time we live in, and how we live together. Enjoy.
