In different quantitative studies, scientists have examined how much time visitors in museums spend. The average time spent with an artwork lies between 10 and 15 seconds. 

In ’11 seconds’, Charlotte Bouckaert wants to study 1 photograph with her audience for 1 hour, the duration of the performance. That photograph shows the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. A generic exterior view of the museum on a clear day, photographed from the opposite side of 5th Avenue. 

On stage there’s a worktable with clippings, paper, scissors, paint, etc. A video camera projects what’s happening on the table on the back wall. An artisanal workshop, the studio of a handyman. 

The Guggenheim New-York is the starting point for Charlotte Bouckaert to talk about art and the way we look at it, about art traditions and conventions, about the relationship between art and reality, about the museum as an institution, the commercialisation of the art world, woman in the arts, photography and transience, etc. 

11 seconds is an ode to art itself, too artists and to the laborious attempts to say something meaningful about art.