An Hour (2020 / on-going)
performance, 60 mins

An ongoing series of works that reveal the tension between objectively measured clock time and time as subjective experience.

When the machines that count time for us are removed from view, how well can we judge its passing? How does our individual experience of time change when we are the ones responsible for measuring it? When does our understanding of time give way to an experience of duration?

In this performance, performers attempted to count time accurately (without the use of a clock), for one hour - counting the seconds silently in their minds and announcing each passing minute out loud.

Taking place online, the relationship between performer and audience is imbalanced. With audiences’ cameras turned off and microphones muted, there is no immediate feedback from the audience, for the performers or each other. No shared experience. We are invisible and silent in this shared virtual space.

‘This performance utilizes the architecture of an increasingly familiar online space without compromise and offers the audience a space of quiet contemplation. The audible, inconsistent marking of time passing creates the sense of an expanded or continuous present. A sustained period of being ‘in the moment’. - Sue Withers

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Created in collaboration with Martin Lewis, an artist, lecturer and PhD by Practice research student at Loughborough University. His research is concerned with drawing, repetition, and duration. See Also: Wasted Labour

This performance (27th November 2020) was commissioned by Radar, in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS). https://radar.lboro.ac.uk/projects/on-time/

Many thanks to Radar and IAS for their support, and to performers Amy Conti, Hannah Day, Laura Evans, Maria L. Felixmüller, Martha Jordan, Sam Thompson-Plant, and Filip Vostal