Yesterday/Today - Dan Graham

A video monitor in a public space displays a present-time view of the visual activities of a second, nearby room. In this space, the inhabitants' daily activities follow a defined routine with rhythmic periodicity related to a specific time of day, where people discuss ongoing activities (informing an ongoing chronicle), and which imposes a definite modification in role, or of consciousness, upon someone entering it.

The visual scene on the monitor is accompanied by an audio play-back of sounds, tape-recorded from the second room one day before, but at exactly the same taime of the day. Two time continua having presumably the same rate of forward flow, one aural and thge other visual, can be observed separately or conjointly. The visual activities and the sounds may more or less phase rhythmically, overlap, or actually coincide. As the room is nearby, the spectator may directly enter its actual space if he desires. The installation may be repeated daily indefinitely.


This work is representational and narrative. It is better read, not as immediate image, but over an extended time period. It is contextually related to ther eal(historical, unpredictable) events of the particular space, to the viewer's relation to that space (and to the institution it encloses), and to the real world environment. All these factors have a bearing on the work's "reading".