Vanishing Twin

- an unfinished work -

‘Vanishing Twin’ is a medical term for a special circumstance,
in which a woman pregnant with twins, experiences a rare 
and unusual condition: one of the two foetuses starts 
oppressing his sibling, until he, or she disappears completely. 
I see this phenomenon also as a poetic symbol of something, 
which represents our darker or unwanted side, a part of our 
character, which we don’t want to acknowledge or accept, 
or which we want to hide from the gaze of others.

Our work is a small meditation on” Time, Speed, Ageing, and 
All unfinished things". 

The unfinished works – these statements, for which there 
was no more time left – the fragments of creations, which 
never saw the light of day. All people, great and small, 
whose last words froze on their lips, as they went, whose 
movement stopped in mid-air, or whose thoughts disappeared 
like a flock of birds, or like some kind of a ‘Vanishing Twin’.
(Webern, Mozart, Kafka, Herculaneum, Pompeii…). 

All this is a disturbing and wonderful food for fantasy and 
speculation. But, these thoughts, feelings, concepts or ideas 
are certainly not lost. There is much wealth, inspiration and 
reassurance in this untold heritage. No matter, if this legacy 
contains a legend, lie, or just a joke. It is there to be re-
searched, understood and used. 

	

It is the missing link, which gives us the chance to move freely 
between the past and the future…... I am interested in all these 
unspoken words, unfinished images, or unheard sounds – things 
which were imagined, but never realised.
	
The beginning of our physical existence is clearly defined by 
time and by place in which we were born, but the end of our 
time is being kept in the dark, so we make all kinds of intricate 
plans, in order to cheat fate, and try to expand the duration 
of our life, or put an end to it. Our lives were planted into the 
soil of the endlessness of time, and the vastness of never 
ending space. But this eternity is constantly punctuated by 
unpredictable rhythms, cycles or periods – Our heartbeat, 
breathing, walking, the start and the end of our lives, seasons, 
appearances and disappearances of planets, solar systems, 
galaxies, or the emergencies of any kind of ‘Very big bangs’, 
designed to create or destroy life. In all this ‘orderly chaos’ 
we try to hold onto our tiny ‘Slice of endlessness’ , our life 
span, and try to make some sense of it. We don’t know, how 
much time is left for us, to be able to say, whatever we need 
to say, and we will never know the value of the trace, which 
we have left on our small planet – Surely, I realise, that I have 
become a little older, writing these words, (and so do you, 
reading them), but in any case, I should be very curious to see, 
how incredibly tiny our work will be, whenever measured up 
against endlessness and infinity, or against much smaller things 
than that.

                    Jiří Kylián - The Hague, january 2008