This project builds on a view of “time” as a site of sociopolitical struggle, conceptualizing it not merely as a linear progression but as a terrain of contestation, while examining different conceptions of temporality. Leveraging film both as an emblem of History, and a time-based object, the project uses the possibilities of montage theory and practices to revisit, reconnect and reinterpret events through alternative temporal frameworks; ones that lend themselves to micronarratives and psychological mapping.

The research aims to overlay ideas of time emerging from scientific, spiritual, and speculative fields, not merely for their distinctive utilization of notions of temporality, but primarily taking into consideration the conditions that led to the emergence of those notions, and the initial reception their harnessed. The aim is to access a different viewpoint through which relations between geographically and temporally disparate instances of turbulent sociopolitical struggle are reconnected in a new light, uninhibited by the hierarchy of causality and the default flow of linear time.

Mohamed A. Gawad is an editor and filmmaker, currently a PhD fellow at Kunstakademiet I Trondheim, KiT, at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His practice traverses film, installations, sound, and text, often investigating film and video practices and their structural foundations. His works have been screened and exhibited in various festivals and spaces, including Berlinale, Oberhausen Film Festival, HKW, and the Whitechapel Gallery.