How do we use time? How do we get used to time? And how are we used by time?

The ‘School of Temporalities’ questions a taken-for-granted understanding of time as an inert background of our social lives. The project explores how time is treated as a precious commodity and pervades our time-conscious society. What are these economies of time?

Various study groups explore how different understandings of time and embodied experiences of temporality are intertwined with power and agency. The research is guided by the question: How are individuals grouped according to certain time patterns? The School of Temporalities investigates collaboratively, performatively and visually how these time patterns impact and shape the ways in which people interact and live together.

In its first ventures, the School of Temporalities (SOT) used the infrastructure of the art manifestation Call of the Mall to investigate ‘the backstage of time’ in mall Hoog Catharijne – Utrecht/NL.

Furthermore, SOT initiated reading sessions, amongst others with Jonathan Crary’s book ‘Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep’. These sessions function as a springboard to discuss our immediate asynchronic environments, in which we will dwell, wander and when unpredictable timings occur while reading.

In its recent iteration, Maja Bekan, Annette Krauss and Julia Wieger hold online conversations with a group of women of different occupations and ages, based in or connected to Graz/Austria, on how they experience time during Covid-19.

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Camera Austria/Graz