Atemporal Hiccup

Bin Koh

Emmett James Palaima

Shani Leseman

Sungeun Lee

Jochem van den Wijngaard

Text by Nick Reilly

The hiccup is a harmless malfunction, a gentle reminder that the procedures running

throughout our body are prone to error, wherein it’s usual functioning is interrupted

(it is difficult to do anything when you have hiccups other than try to get rid of them).

Being trapped in a fit of hiccups brings to the surface biological temporalities within

our bodies (the breath, the heartbeat, the circadian rhythm) and freezes us in a time

determined by them. The same goes for when we forget something important or say

something unintentionally, the infamous Freudian slip. A spanner is thrown into the

works of a machine that usually ticks along smoothly. Just as with a hiccup,

a temporality emerges in the slip, a delay occurs due to our conscious intention

being interrupted by another process at work (the unconscious). This delay may be

short, shaving only a few seconds off from our intentions—in which case we just

laugh off the slip and proceed to say the intended word—or we may ruminate upon it

for the rest of our lives (e.g. spending hours and hours on the psychoanalyst’s couch

wondering why it is one often says the word magnet instead of mother). In either

case, the ‘error’ always gives us pause, an interruption that prompts reflection.

The human is dependent upon and made up of a complex of biological and

psychological processes that are error-prone, ranging from a harmless slip of the

tongue to full psychotic breakdown. Whilst this capacity for malfunction may cause

suffering, it is also what marks subjectivity. The incomplete structure of language that

is particular to human culture is in many ways an inefficient and leaky system.

Whilst the linguistic signs we depend upon facilitate communication amongst us,

they also allow for misinterpretation (for example a word may conjure up an entirely

different set of connotations for me than it does for you, stirring up completely

different emotions). Despite this inefficiency that makes us error-prone, it is also

what enables our capacity for reflection at all; interruption and reflection can not be

separated.

The threat of artificial intelligence replacing humans or turning upon us emerges

from an ideology—one which has been around for much longer than ChatGPT—

which makes an equivalence between efficiency, speed and thought. Whilst the idea

of an ‘efficient’ society running on pure, objective communication may have some

appeal (wherein what one says cannot be misunderstood and in which we never

say something embarrassing accidentally) it would also be no society at all; signals

would replace signs and reflex would replace reflection.

Atemporal Hiccup stays with the interruption. Through a series of interventions,

the participating artists ask the audience to do the same. To pause, reflect and look

afresh at the machines running in the background of our lives to the other side;

where there is a pause or a slip, where there is a delay. In doing so, Atemporal

Hiccup asks us to grasp these moments not as a failure but as a site for meaning

and novelty, a space in which misunderstandings may occur alongside shared

projects of imagination.

De Apotheek

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