Time | Collaborative Art and Original Poetry

The Background

As an artist, I'm a big fan of collaborative work and find it incredibly inspiring and fulfilling. A few months ago, I had been collaborating with different artists on random projects - some where they painted me, some where we wrote together, some where we performed together. But I started thinking - how do we go beyond this? What if we aren't just creating or observing or appreciating art? One of the best compliments I've ever received is when someone told me that I am like art, and I truly believe we're all living, breathing versions of art. So I wondered, can I collaborate with people in a way that we are active elements of the art we create? Is there a way to be a Part of the Art?

I had a lot of conversations with people and a lot of great ideas came out of them, but not all of them could be materialised mainly due to logistics. This one, however, did. My friend suggested we make a human clock and I wondered about the deeper implications of that. After some research, we decided to explore the concept of time and the role we play in it.

Reading and Inspiration

There are usually two opposing views of time. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe—a dimension independent of events, in which events occur in sequence. Newton described this as the realist view.
The opposing view, held by Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant suggests that time does not refer to any kind of actually existing dimension that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead an intellectual concept (together with space and number) that enables humans to sequence and compare events. 1

Martin Heidegger suggested that we do not exist inside time, we are time. Hence, the relationship to the past is a present awareness of having been, which allows the past to exist in the present. The relationship to the future is the state of anticipating a potential possibility, task, or engagement. It is related to the human propensity for caring and being concerned, which causes "being ahead of oneself" when thinking of a pending occurrence. Therefore, this concern for a potential occurrence also allows the future to exist in the present. 2

Time in physics is usually rather unambiguously defined as what a clock reads, and what better way to embody time than becoming the clock itself?

___________________________________________

The Project

A culmination of photography, art, and poetry.

I am Time

As long as I
take up space,
I am  being
           becoming
           creating
Time:
             a simpler word
              for the multitudinous versions of me
that have been
and will be.

piecing themselves together
through        past memories,
                       future dreams,
                 in current mind-
fullness
into one entity;

heart ticking,
pendulum hands         swaying
                     with
                                        every
                     step,
blood rushing up and down veins
like sand in an hourglass,
and breath. reiterating that nothing
can be held
longer than it is meant.

So everything I conceive comes down
to this very minute
moment.
                               that is always passing

_____________________________

The Making

We started with taking a horde of pictures of me in different poses as different 'times' against a blank wall.

It was tricky at first to not get carried away doing different poses and actually find a way to represent the hands of a clock.

A few failed attempts

After using both legs, one leg, all limbs, we decided, ironically enough, that it was best not to use my actual hands.

Aishwarya combined pictures we took with her art to create versions of the past and an indication of the future. Months of procrastination later, I wrote the poem inspired by our initial reading. You can also find a typewritten version and a reading (in my highlights) of this poem on my instagram page (@karunya6)

Further Pondering

This is a whole other discussion, but if you're interested, and want to take this a step further, quantum mechanics baffles us (as it usually does) with the idea that time, as we know it and measure it, doesn't exist at all. I'm not a physicist, but here's what I understand from this concept. Click on the links to read and watch more.
The theory goes by the delayed choice experiment which is related to the double slit experiment. Just as the double slit experiment illustrates how consciousness and observation alter the quantum wave function into a single piece of matter with defined properties, the delayed choice experiment illustrates how what happens in the present can change what happens(ed) in the past. It also shows how cause and effect can be reversed, and how the future caused the past.

As John Wheeler explains it, imagine a star billions of years ago emitting a photon headed towards the Earth. In between, there's a galaxy, so the photon will have to bend around the galaxy in order to reach the Earth; taking one of two days - left or right. Billions of years later (now) if we set up an apparatus to catch the photon, we'd see an interference pattern, like that of waves demonstrating a wave of potentialities. But if we chose to peek and observe which side of the galaxy the photon was coming from, the pattern would become a single clump that shows that the photon took 'one' way. Thus, how we choose to measure now affects what path the photon took billions of years ago! 3 Pretty mind-blowing, huh?

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