The Art of Time
Fergus Daly
Synopsis
'In contemporary culture we are often told that ‘time’ as we have experienced it historically is being obliterated by the speed and acceleration of our technology-driven society. Many artists, writers and creative practitioners in various fields feel that the work they make contests this process. The Art of Time asks: how are leading artists and thinkers responding to today’s new and rapidly changing world? It explores how leading international practitioners in architecture, video art, film, theatre and philosophy are challenging traditional temporal ideas, questioning the nature of memory and perception today, and inventing new and radical notions of Time..' – Fergus Daly and Katherine Waugh
Contributors: Vito Acconci, Doug Aitken, Chantal Akerman, Brothers Quay, David Claerbout, Stan Douglas, Peter Eisenman, Sylvere Lotringer, Ivone Margulies, Paul Morley, Alexander Sokurov, John Rajchman, Axel Vervoordt, Robert Wilson.
Review:
‘The Art of Time’ is primarily situated in the city, except in the opening passages where Venice is presented as a geographic and temporal counterpoint – a nostalgic turn of the ‘hypermodernic’ page, a time when the passage was not so fast. The film’s subjects are Time and Space, and how both are being lost, imagined, spread, leveled, or reimagined by the multidisciplinary arts. I say ‘multidisciplinary’ with some trepidation, as the term ‘temporality’, which is the ‘lynchpin’ of philosophical discourse and contemporary art and cinema, is primarily being dealt with by the moving image rather than the traditional art object per se. ‘The Art of Time’, inadvertently asks questions about the cause and effect, or lack thereof, of contemporary art on history and time, and the philosophical discourse that continues to have a growing influence on arts formal exercises in space and time, and vice versa. — James Merrigan
Images
Details
Title
The Art of Time
Year
2009
Form
Feature
Key phrases
documentary, time, technology, memory, perception, space
Language
English; Russian; English subtitles
Duration
01:35:00
Original formats
Physical: Betacam Digital (Digi-Beta), Physical: HDV
Aspect ratio
16:9
Colour
Mixture
Sound
Yes