Helene Lundbye Petersen

The Beige Book - On Time and Space Helene Lundbye Petersen

When we try to comprehend the measured concept of time, we are confronted by its vastness. To compare a 4 billion year old rock in your hand to the 20 million year old stones that lie scattered around the Earth is unbearably abstract to relate to. The same goes for when we try to relate to space, and the changes all known forms undergo: A body aging, buildings deteriorating, or the radical tectonic transformations of our planet as exemplified by marine fossils discovered at the top of Mount Everest, which bear witness to the fact that the highest peak of the Earth today, was once the deepest depth of the ocean. Time and space are the coordinates that together create a body of life in any given form. Anything that has a form is subject to change in one way or the other - just with different life spans in time and space.

The Beige Book - On Time and Space is devoted to holding this abstract vastness, not as numbers or any measurable form, but as a feeling. Beige is the colour of the remains of something, when all other colours are gone. It is the colour of our bones, ruins, and deserts of sand. This book wishes to provide us with a space to understand through feeling that there were lives before us, civilisations before us, and that one day we will literally become beige as well. This space holds the humility of life by placing it into perspective to remind us that while we may lose ourselves in our present time and space, this is just one moment in a much greater span of existence. The Beige space must not be forgotten or neglected, for it holds the wisdom that reminds us of why we are here.

The Beige Book - On Time and Space is the 8th book in the series 'Colour Spectrum of 11 Spaces', which consists of 11 Calligraphic Manuscripts, handwritten books created between 2011 and 2015 by Danish artist and thinker Helene Lundbye Petersen.