by Paul Chan

WHAT DOES IT mean to change? No one steps in the same river twice, Heraclitus wrote. The world is unimaginably different now from what it was in 500 b.c. For instance, many rivers today are so polluted it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to step into them even once. But things are not so different that Heraclitus’s insight doesn’t ring true. Change is still an implacable ever-present force, as momentous as it is banal. This is the cunning of change. Everything flows; nothing remains. And it happens whether we want it or not. Like time passing. Change is time rendered sensuous and real.

This essay appeared originally in the June 1, 2013 issue of Art in America and appears in its entirety in our catalogue: A Body in Places: Danspace Project PLATFORM 2016.