The Timekeeper and the Hour Glass

In the summer of 2023, Dr Karen Heald, Reader in Interdisciplinary Art Practice, visited Japan for the 18th Triennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time (ISST).
 
The five-day conference saw artists, scientists and scholars gather to explore the role of time from an interdisciplinary perspective. 

This year’s conference explored Time and Measure, looking at how different professions have developed differing systems of time measurement, beyond that of clocks in some instances. 

Dr Heald’s abstract from the conference:
 
The Timekeeper and the Hour Glass: Artist Moving image and Poetic Nonlinear Aspects of Time
 
“For many Western cultures the artificial construction of time is often measured chronologically through our perceptions of the ‘clock’.
 
Communicating similar expressions as contemporary artists and theorists, Kiyokawa Asami, Pipilotti Rist, Trinh T Minha and Tacita Dean, the author, an interdisciplinary artist and academic whose practice embraces moving image proposes creating a new short film and a contextualising paper specific for the exhibition and symposia that explores poetic nonlinear aspects of time.
 
The research is set within the context of contemporary art, arts and science research, feminist action, and site-responsive approaches. Through a complex interdisciplinary methodology incorporating the performative use of time-based media while engaging with philosophical enquiry, visual analysis and experimental research, the thesis will draw upon Jane Hawkins memoirs ‘Travelling to infinity …, Julia Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality and Hito Steyerl artworks and essay documentaries. The paper aims to articulate the phenomena of culture and the ‘unmeasurability’ of temporal and spatiotemporal objects of sensory experience as distinguished from the ‘clock’.”

Dr Heald’s work in progress is a film titled ‘The Timekeeper and the Hour Glass’