Conceived and conducted by: Annette Bhagwati und Kirsten Einfeldt (Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin) Please note: Due to illness A. Bhagwati will be represented by Olga von Schubert.

Time is not only a scientific measure delineating the sequence of events – it is equally a cultural construct that is subject to individual perception. As such, the conception of time reflects and influences the context in which it emerges. Acceleration, deceleration and stasis are perceptions that are determined by prevailing structures and regimes of time, as are concepts such as "present", "future" or "eternity".

This session investigates the examination and experience of time from a transcultural perspective in the visual arts, addressing not only how artists themselves adopt the theme of time and its various articulations, but also the aesthetic and dramaturgical strategies artists use to make the experience of time possible. This applies to time-based visual and performative arts, but in particular to art operating in two-dimensional media.

The session's scope in terms of era and discipline is open. For this reason, we will invite contributors from the fields of art and cultural studies, art sociology, medieval studies, architecture and Popular Art, as well as artistic researchers working on the cutting edge between art, science and knowledge production.

Potential topics include (but are not restricted to):

• the structure of time (series, repetition, rhythm, pulse), as well as synchronicity and asynchronicity as artistic strategies;
• strategies for (re)producing the present, and the experience of being in the present, in the visual arts;
• disruption as an aesthetic moment;
• the representation of duration and temporality in non-time-based art;
• the experience of timelessness and eternity in art;
• the contestation of acceleration as a defining aspect of the 20th century (“great acceleration”);
• the simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous – regimes of time and postcolonial criticism (Kentridge’s “Refusal of Time”, co-evalness);
• the influence of quantum physics in the visual arts.

Contact: 

Annette.Bhagwati@hkw.de  

kirsten.einfeldt@gmail.com

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The selected participants are:

Amara Antilla

Sandra Chatterjee

Isabelle Dolezalek

Vanessa Díaz Rivas

Ksenia Robbe

Guillermo Wilde