The Atemporal Event

Helga Schmid

Exposition

The Atemporal Event (2021)

Helga Schmid, Kevin Walker

open exposition

About this exposition

The COVID pandemic has prompted many people to reconsider their previous living and working rhythms and to consider alternatives. We believe that the global enslavement to the standardised time of clocks and calendars has had a negative impact on us individually, socially, and environmentally. We aim, therefore, to change perceptions of time by helping people step outside societal time, treating time instead as a malleable material that can be stretched and moulded. This exposition describes our process, outcomes, and analysis in staging an event using an alternative approach based on natural and material time processes specifically related to the body and the external day/night cycle driven by light colour and intensity. In a twenty-four-hour event in London designed around chronobiological phases, we investigated our research question of how to change perceptions of time by treating it as a malleable material. We discovered that treating time as a malleable material necessitates first stepping outside of the clock-time system: in our case, using daylight and bodily chronobiological phases as alternative time-givers. Dialogues using linguistic and non-linguistic means between ourselves, our collaborators and participants, as well as with our tools and materials, resulted in treating time as place, and places and things in temporal terms. We discovered that time is not only stretchable but can take different shapes and qualities, with multiple times existing alongside each other, by 'programming' actions and activities through performance, rhythm, and materiality. Our research focuses on the broader issue of the ‘time crisis’ as identified by sociologists, chronobiologists, and philosophers, as a result of acceleration processes driven by digital technologies and contemporary 24/7 societal norms. We address this by bringing together Helga's research on ‘uchronia’ (temporal utopia or non-time) and Kevin's anthropological perspective on designing embodied experiences.

type	research exposition
keywords	time, Uchronia, performance, design, light, Experience, conversation
date	30/12/2021
published	30/12/2021
last modified	30/12/2021
status	published
affiliation	University of the Arts London / University College London
copyright	the authors
license	CC BY-NC-ND
language	English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/827680/827681
doi	https://doi.org/10.22501/jar.827680
published in	Journal for Artistic Research
portal issue	25. 25
external link	uchronia.world

Copyrights

name	Wake up
copyright	the authors
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	Drawing sequence
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	Wake-up Phase room
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Diagram from Charles Renouvier's Uchronie, redrawn by Helga Schmid
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Uchronia diagram by Helga Schmid
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Uchronia diagram by Helga Schmid
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Uchronia diagram by Helga Schmid
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Uchronia diagram by Helga Schmid
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Diagram redrawn from Van de Velde (2003)
copyright	Walter van de Velde
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Project Instrumental
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	Project Instrumental
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Project Instrumental
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Project Instrumental
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Project Instrumental
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Excerpt of 50lx - Sonic Exploration by Project Instrumental + borderlandstate // best kisser in la
copyright	Project Instrumental
license	All rights reserved
usages	audio

name	Federico Campagna
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	150 > 4Hz - Rhythmic Rocking Chair by Nick Ryan
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	Designing Time
copyright	Francisco Ibanez Hantke
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Yaprak sequence
copyright	Carl Bigmore / Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	Laura Lorenzi
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	m.c. schraefel
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	BURN THE CHAIR says m.c. schraefel
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Movement Phase music excerpt by Ronnie Deelen
copyright	Ronnie Deelen
license	All rights reserved
usages	audio

name	Where's Wally by Lucy Mercer
copyright	the author
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	https://nemesis.global/memos/umami
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Microbial Meditation workshop by Baum+Leahy
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Microbial Meditation workshop by Baum+Leahy
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	https://nemesis.global/memos/umami
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Microbial Meditation workshop by Baum+Leahy
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Beholder by United Visual Artists
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Chronobiologist Debra Skene
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Chronobiologist Debra Skene
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	slideshow

name	Concentration Phase music excerpt by Piotr Ceglarek
copyright	Piotr Ceglarek
license	All rights reserved
usages	audio

name	Sleep Dome
copyright	Carl Bigmore
license	All rights reserved
usages	video

name	Wake-up
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Movement Phase
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Nap Phase
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Movement Phase
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Intuitive Phase
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Sleepiness Phase
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Sleep Phase
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Uchronia Manifesto
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	pdf

name	Uchronia book
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Minkowski space
copyright	Kevin Walker
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

name	Phases_V8
copyright	Helga Schmid
license	All rights reserved
usages	picture

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The Atemporal Event (2021)

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