Mythical time is restful, like a picture. Historical time, by contrast, has the form of a line which runs or rushes towards a goal. If this line loses its narrative or teleological tension, it disintegrates into points which whizz around without any sense of direction. The end of history atomizes time into point-time.
Historical time knows no lasting present […] Time is change, process development. The present has no substance of its own; it is only a transitional point. Nothing is. Everything becomes.
Acceleration, much discussed today, is not a primary process which subsequently leads to various changes within the lifeworld, but a symptom, a secondary process, that is, a consequence of time having lost its hold and having been atomized, its being without any inhibiting gravitation.
BYUNG-CHUL HAN, THE SCENT OF TIME
Time in and on the body
- scars
- memories
- wrinkles
- breathing
- heartbeat
- sleep and awakening
- eating, digesting
- nails and hair grow
- functioning body needs maintenance
- elasticity of skin
When I was five or six I fell on a rocky beach. I hurt my knee. There was blood. The scarred tissue is now above the knee. On my shin I can still see a faded scar where I had cut off a piece of my skin while shaving my legs. On my foot, an almost invisile dimple. I think it was in 2003. A broken tile was lying around when grandma’s house was being built. My grandparents don’t live anymore. I burnt my right hand when I was 18; second degree burn. When I was 26 I got my heart irreparably broken. Two deep wrinkles around my mouth appear when I laugh. Over the years they have become part of my face.
Time in public
People come and go; in the train station. They are on their way to catch the train, to get on a bus. They get off the bus and on the train. Streams of people. They are on the go. They are on their way to work, to school, to the supermarket, to the doctor’s, to meet someone, to visit their beloved, to meet their lover, to pick up their children from school, they are on vacation, they are on their way home, they are from out of town, they return from shopping, from work, from yoga-class, from a date. They are on their way; they pass. They pass through and their paths cross. Sometimes they wait: stand, sit on a bench, lean back against the wall. Some eat, some read, some are busy with their smartphone. One plays the piano. It is a white piano. I can hardly hear it. It is not their public space; it is a space for passing through.
performance practices_divergent temporalities 