TIME IS RUNNING
“Every Sunday, I ran at sunrise around the Lusthaus. The same path, the same circle—but the moment was never the same. The rising sun shifted, the light changed, and so did I.”
TIME IS RUNNING offers a deeply personal yet universal meditation on time, place, and ritual. Over the course of a year, Wolfgang Lehrner recorded his runs. Each of the 52 videos takes you on a run around Vienna's Lusthaus, every Sunday precisely at sunrise, capturing the golden moment when the day unfolds. This exact timing transforms the sunrise into a natural clock, marking the passage of days and seasons. The interplay of light and shadow as the sun rises serves as the work’s anchor, symbolizing beginnings, continuity, and the relentless flow of time.
More than a backdrop, the sunrise is a central element, embodying the precision and inevitability of time’s progression. Each sunrise is singular—shaped by its day, season, and atmospheric conditions. By preserving these ephemeral moments, the work explores the tension between constancy and change, permanence and impermanence.
The act of running, repeated weekly, becomes a meditation on persistence, discipline, and the passage of life. While each run follows the same path, the changing conditions render it profoundly different. This interplay between routine and variation mirrors the rhythms of life itself, where repetition coexists with transformation. Running becomes an open-ended reflection on purpose and direction, inviting contemplation of motion without destination—both liberation and acknowledgment of time’s constraints.
THANKS
Cornelis van Almsick, Martin Grandits
(Long-term and long-distance running companions)