The subjective experience of time pressure in today’s efficiency- and performance-oriented society is fuelled by a paradox: acceleration is ominpresent due to economic and technological demands, while at the same time complexity and self-responsibility demand more time for decisions. This PhD thesis examines individual and institutional forms of dealing with discrepant time demands. Where and how do different age groups experience simultaneously occurring, yet different time regimes? Which techniques do individuals and institutions use or invent to synchronize different time perceptions, rhythms, and activities? How can artistic-research experimentation with filmic means create asynchronicity and make it experienceable? And, finally, to what extent can filmic thinking produce ways of knowing that convey (as yet) unverbalized perceptions of time?
Methodologically, this research combines analytical and artistic approaches in an essayistic procedure comprising cinematic practice and writing. On the one hand, it explores different aspects of divergent perceptions of time in a series of case studies under the leitmotif of “asynchronous determinations of time.” Situated in both immaterial and care work, in which bodily and affective temporalities are highly important, these empirical investigations consider the role of lifetime (age, biography, memory) and temporal modes (tempos; imperatives, indicatives, subjunctives). On the other hand, this study develops specific artistic procedures for focusing perception by means of narration, fragmentation, montage, visual and linguistic interventions, extractions and interweavings. Since simultaneous non-simultaneities (tend to) overwhelm subjective experience, the procedures adopted in this research contribute to new forms of filmic thinking and images of thought. They should be understood as an incentive to empathize with different understandings of time.
Three artifacts emerged as results of the PhD research:
– First, Face No Dial of a Clock: A cross-temporal fugue. This film essay self-reflectively connects the main thrust of the research with a methodological interest in cinematic modes of perceiving asynchronicity. Two speculative figures mingle with the case material: an imaginary friend, Chiara, and her tracing of Maya Deren’s unfinished film project to create a cross-cultural fugue in the 1940s.
– Second, a collection of texts titled Denkmotive asynchroner Erfahrungen. Ein Abécédaire zu Material und Prozess filmischen Denkens (Thinking Asynchronic Experiences: An Abecedary of the Material and Process of Filmic Thinking).
– Third, an Bilderbogen, A-Z (Boardsheets of images, A-Z), a compilation of visual material on a newspaper-format related to the abecedary and the film essay.
The interplay of these three artifacts reveals varying and mutually illumining perspectives on the material. The relations, motifs, and variations between the different media approaches form a texture that seeks to make condensed experiences of asynchronicity recognizable, communicable, and possible.
Open access:
Link to the film essay (on the ZHdK Medienarchiv platforme):
With English subtitles
DOI: 10.48504/2d0t-qr77-02
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Based on the print version and its three main elements (film, text and image parts), a multimedia open-access online publication in English is in preparation. The development of this format aims to contribute to an artistic understanding of Open Science, in that the interplay of the multimedia outputs will help to reveal the process of artistic-research procedures and make them available to others as a resource. This publication project is part of the funding project “Innovative Publishing in Open Access” and was also supported by a ZHdK translation fund. Planned publication: December 2023