How do you define time?An ode to Nomas Magazine,13th issue about time

Are you aware of the definition of the word nomad?Nomas magazine redefines the meaning in an artistic,alternative and lyricist approach.For 12 consecutive issues the magazine dedicated it’s covers and its content to cities around the world,it offered us its unique perception of hidden gems through photography,art and writing all well combined into a cultural mix to make us feel the need to travel and have a more deeper look on the places we visit.

But Issue no 13,a number not accidental at all,was published under totally different conditions due to the pandemic,the restrictions on travelling and the confinement and isolation at home.What also changed in Nomas latest issue is the title and the content,their theme is Time and its association with art.The latest issue offers a deep dive into the contemporary art world with artworks related to time,existing ones or projects the magazine asked the artists to create.

Some of our favourites here on E.K.

From left to right 1.Ariana Papademetropoulos (courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery) 2.Maria Hassabi,Dusseldorf 2018(courtesy The Breeder, Athens) 3.Wolfgang Tillmans,Zero Gravity IV,2001 4.Pantelis Chandris,Fossils (commissioned for NOMAS magazine) 5.Mike Kelley,Brown Star 1991(Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts/Osdeete,Greece; photo Nie Tenwiggenhor) 6.Alexis Vassilikos,Fountain 2019,courtesy of Can Christina Androulidaki Gallery)

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But beside the contribution of the Greek and international artists,among them the legends Maurizio Cattelan and Jeff Koons,this journey across the contemporary art accomplished thank to the participation of the DESTE Foundation of Dakis Joannou and the artistic director of the New Museum in New York Massimiliano Gioni.In its pages you will discover new lands and you will visit new places but this time the journey is imaginary through Art,texts and interesting interviews among the highlights is the interview of my personal favourite Greek conductor with an international career Teodor Currentzis.

Here our artistic approach on the NOMAS 13.The photographer,Panos Kadigkos captured the images and also assisted me on the art direction.

Photo,Panos Kadigkos

To think of time—of all that retrospection!

To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

To think of time , Walt Whitman

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

T.S. Eliot

Photo,Panos Kadigkos

Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam

And admit that the waters around you have grown

And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth saving

Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times, they are a-changin’

Bob Dylan,The times they are A-changin’

Within you,your years are growing; within me, my years are prowling.Time is resolute,we do not hear it toll; it grows and roams within us,it appears,a bottomless well,ln our gaze, at the corner of your burnt-chestnut eyes a filamentthe course of a diminutive river,a shooting star streaking toward your lips.Time adds its threads to your hair, but in my heart your honeysuckle fragrance is living fire. It is beautiful,as we have done, to grow old living life to the full. Each day was transparent stone, each night for us an inky rose,so this wrinkle on your face, or mine, is a stone, a flower,the memory of the lightning’s flash. My eyes have burned out in your beauty, but you are my eyes.I perhaps exhausted your breasts beneath my kisses, but the world knows your secret splendor in my happiness. Love, what does it matter that time, the very time that raised two flames, two waving heads of wheat, my body and your gentleness, tomorrow will hold them safe or mill the grain, and with those same unseen fingers erase the identities that separate us,giving us the final victory of being one beneath the ground. Pablo Neruda,Ode to Time

“In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!” Rainer Maria Rilke,Letters to a young poet

In addition because of the fact that I happened to be their first reader of the region Kilkis (currently due to the pandemic I’m staying here until I get back to Athens) they sent me as a gift the Moscow issue.In order to thank them we did a special photoshooting,which would be revealed soon.

You can learn more about Nomas Magazine here shop the issue here and follow them on Instagram and Facebook.

Thank you for taking the time to read the article.We live in an era where we consume tons of images and with each one feels like time disintegrated,let’s select carefully what to keep and what to discard.

Last one a song by a Greek artist ,Good job Nicky

Steal a lil’ time from me

Make a lil’ time for me

We don’t really ask for much

Grains in the hourglass

Keep dropping down

Keep dropping down

8th January,Good Job Nicky

Eleni Kadigkou Xx