Chronopolitics

The Chronopolitics program has a twofold objective: to provide a forum for artists advocating ethical stances on the future, and to prompt critical reflection on the social and political issues around the notion of time.

This program of screenings and essays observe how time is used to oppressive ends. It encompasses a vast space of practices and discourses: the dominance of Western normative chronologies and historical narratives over the rest of the world; the messianic discourses of neoliberalism, convinced that the climate crisis is merely a matter of economic equilibrium and resilience; advances in technology that facilitate our social and professional relations even as they destabilize them; and last but not least, the algorithmic profiling that subjects us to instantaneous, fully programmed decisions. Our daily lives had increasingly been defined by acceleration, intensification and urgency – until the pandemic brought on a brutal desynchronization and a decisive downshift, compelling us to an awareness of how our lives are temporally organized.

As we emerge from our ensuing confinement in what Hartmut Rosa has termed “islands of deceleration,” how do we rethink the social function of time when we must, on one hand, contend with the narrow timeframe of a human life, and on the other, shape a sustainable time-space for the generations to come?