Viktigt, the Swedish word for important, literary means ”a thing of considerable weight”. We Swedes often talk about heavy ideas and weighty thoughts. Which indicates that “importance” somehow is linked to gravity. This connection could explain why a strong sensation of importance seem to slow down the experience of time passing. As proved by the theory of relativity, gravity halts the velocity of time. Next to an object with endless mass and gravity such as a black hole, time stands still.

The spot on earth that most resembles a black hole is probably the waiting room. Here, mental gravity is so dense that time is stretched out infinitely. This fact lends the space its essential feature of being a non-space, a free port, a limbo position “in between”. It is a place separated from the normal timeline of society. It is a non-activity chamber.

In the installation, The Waiting Room, by Bigert & Bergström, a suspended “office” ceiling, holds 9 hanging spherical photos. Depicting the room in negative yet the figures populating the images are represented in positive. The globes rotate slowly on their own axis, giving them the cinematic effect of a fish-eye lens panning the room. The photographs’ individual positions and movements break up the room into 9 different sections in time and space.