holding your breath[...]tick,tock... by claire scanlon

…Holding your breath for a minute feels like an hour… holding your lover for an hour feels like a minute…tick, tock… Andrew Alfred Charles Cooper BA (Hons) Contemporary Photographic Arts Practice 2009

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my Mother and Father for their encouragement and financial support; Caroline Cooper and Peter Knight for their technical assistance; Paul Grivell and Claire Scanlon for their theoretical advice and reading recommendations, and finally, any persons I have exchanged dialogue with in relevance to this piece of writing.

Abstract The purpose of this dissertation has been to explore the contradictions and paradoxes within time & language and within time & photography. The main focus has been the perception of and a possible desire for the instant. In reference to the title of this piece of writing, I discuss what being in the zone might mean and its relationship to photography, if one at all. My writing goes on to explain the very idea of the now and of the present and I reference fictional writings to illuminate my ideas lucidly. I also present some photographic and film artwork to illustrate the idea of the instant. Through a little scientific research I discover and discuss the idea real time and that of perceived time, stopping. Furthermore, I explain and examine the ideas of other thinkers on the subject of the event. I explore the questions of duration, subjective eventfulness and ideas of the impossibility of infinity, within the medium of photography and our lived lives.

iii

Contents Acknowledgements

Abstract

iii

Contents

List of Illustrations

Beginning

Part One

It’s written down on a piece of paper… Part Two

The decisive moment… Part Three

Real time, gnawing into the future… End

Bibliography

List of Illustrations Figure 1. Untitled. 2008. Andrew Alfred Charles Cooper. Figure 2. How to Make the Second Hand of a Clock Appear to Stop. 2008. wikiHow. http://www.wikihow.com/Make-the-Second-Hand-on-a-Clock-Appear-to-Stop, December 2008. Figure 3. Behind the Gare Saint – Lazare, Pont de l’Europe Paris. 1932. Henri Cartier-Bresson. Montier, Jean Pierre. Henri Cartier-Bresson And The Artless Art. Thames & Hudson Ltd. London. 1996. Figure 4. Sky. 2008. Andrew Alfred Charles Cooper. Figure 5. Untitled. 1977. Dr. David Gorham & Dr. Ian Hutchings. Marten, Michael, Chesterman, John. May, John. Trux, John. Worlds Within Worlds. A Journey into the Unknown. London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. 1977. Figure 6. Still from: Paradox of Praxis 1. 1997. Francis Alÿs. Kwon, Miwon. ‘Francis Alÿs, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles’, Artforum. February 2008. p. 281. Figure 7. The Photographer Shoots Himself. 1981. Dag Alveng. Green, David, Lowry, Joanna. (Ed). Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Brighton: Photoforum & Photoworks. 2006.

Beginning The title of this piece of writing suggests that I am interested in an occurrence that could be described as time dilation. In its true form time dilation refers to an observer perceiving another personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clock that is identical to there own, but ticktocking at a slower rate. Or in other words, time is slowing down in comparison to the other personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s timepiece. To any other observer, time is passing at the same rate. This is very much, hard physics that I do not want to have to grapple with in this piece of writing. Although, the words time dilation can be used to do describe a human beings miss-perception, or, well aimed-perception of a period time. Therefore, the experience described in the title is that of time dilating. In fact, time dilation can concern itself to any operation that manifests change over time, whether it is the physicalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of (hard physics), or, the perception of change. It is the latter, perception of that I am more interested in. Having said all this, one must remember that the title I have chosen is very much a starting point.

Time and language, as one and in the present, is a paradox, a contradiction. The shopkeeper writes on the hanging open/closed sign that he will be back in five minutes, “promise!” When was this sign written? And whose five minutes? How long is this said duration? When I hear the words “got the time, mate?” I answer twenty to four but often ponder the fact that I can never ever say the words 20 to 4 at precisely 15:40 hours; despite this, it could provide an excuse for my often-poor time management. As well as telling or speaking the time, can one write it down – to be correct at time of writing? Or correct the following day at the same “time”? Is this written information ever flawless in error? Is Chronos1, or recorded time a delusion? Reluctantly, I accept that if I plan to meet my chums at a pub tomorrow I may write the specific hour down, with a note as to where the occasion is to be held, no inconsistencies or error can be founded, unless of course I loose my watch and can’t find another, and no one is willing to enlighten me on the matter. So, I speak the time but am too late. For it has gone. What is the present, or the now? What is the past? Future? What is the time mate? I remember paying for my shopping at the supermarket. The cashier handed a long arm outstretched with the heavy coinage presented on her palm. I opted to put the rest of my shopping in a bag, in a neat and ordered fashion. I aggravated the charming cashier and felt the queue of happy customers breathing leaden and solid gusts on my neck. Time was dilating remarkably. I was at that point, the closest I have ever been to the present, a pure present that wasn’t evidence based or practical, but in fact an enlightened unconsciousness of any past or future, I was just there and in fact, now. The above moment of subjective eventfulness was pivotal and crucial to say the least. I was in the zone, so to speak. A tennis player might feel as though he or she has all the time in the world to rip that forehand and win the game with ease. But this particular “zone”, disciplined at the supermarket, was not one that anyone or I would want to last. My experience of the now was beyond any realm of technical recording, aperture or shutter speed. Can photography document a moment in time? What is a moment? How long is a moment? And can the said medium freeze time? Chronos, in Greek mythology is the personification of time. His name, meaning, “time” refers to measured time. Chronos is imagined as a god; in a serpentine form, with three heads; that of a man, bull and lion. 1

I am at the cinema, watching a tedious and mind numbing film. I have something to explain, but will have to keep my voice down and whisper, so not to disturb anyone, “shush”…In fact I am watching the film now, in real time. In this popcorn infused space the story is presented to me right now, with a neat beginning, middle and end. This film is going out live in this cheerless and murky picture house. This film I mention was recorded over a number of days, weeks, months, possibly years. It has been edited down to around ninety minutes, which seems more or less conventional. The past, present and future events unfolding in the story are pretend time, or unreal time. They are not, A to B, so to speak, or a physical duration of any sort. They are presented to me in a series of finely tuned edits. If this film was unorthodox in nature and was paraded as an unedited sequence of events for whichever reason, then it could be described, “officially” as real time cinema. But I was viewing it in the now. And it was happening in the now. Things only happen once. But possibly, each time the film is processed through the projector on to the screen a new event occurs, a new slice of now.

Part One It's written down on a piece of paper… Time in essence is a universal language. By that I mean it is intrinsic in nature and it can be communicated comprehensibly and all-inclusively. It can also be written down, scheduled or allocated, like a secretary would order appointments. Although, much like language its meaning can change. It could be said that because our observation of time is more often than not, relatively steady and regular it moves at even intervals that make a kind of unconscious sense to our internal circadian rhythm 2. Thus, its rate of change is constant; clear; coherent, or our perception of its movement through space is constant; clear; coherent. But, when one stares at a clock or impatiently glances at one’s wrist watch, we repeat the time in our minds eye, visually, so to speak, and our perception changes significantly; it may slow to a snails pace. And now with language, it could be said that if a word is read aloud or observed meticulously, it would also dance perceptively between middle points. For example, as a child I remember finding artless joy in repeating a word in my head over and over until the sound became meaningless or more precisely its meaning changed, to The term "Circadian", from the Latin Circa, meaning “around", and Diem or Dies meaning "day" – “approximately one day”. A circadian rhythm is a near to 24-hour cycle in the biochemical and physiological processes of living beings. 2

possibly another similar word, or its new aural prickliness made me feel some what otherworldly. Read on… Gramophone: Various time pieces ticking, chiming and cuckooing. A chicken clucking. Finally a hooter. Bluebottle: What time is it Eccles? Eccles: Err, just a minute. I've got it written down ‘ere on a piece of paper. A nice man wrote the time down for me this morning. Bluebottle: Ooooh, then why do you carry it around with you Eccles? Eccles: Welll, um, if anybody asks me the time, I-I can show it to dem. Bluebottle: Wait a minute Eccles, my good man. Eccles: What is it fellow? Bluebottle: It’s writted on this bit of paper, what is eight o’clock, is writted. Eccles: I know that my good fellow. That’s right, um, when I asked the fella to write it down, it was eight o’clock. Bluebottle: Well then. Supposing when somebody asks you the time, it isn’t eight o’clock? Eccles: Well den, I don’t show it to ‘den. Bluebottle: Ooohhh. Eccles: [Smacks lips] yeah. 5

Bluebottle: Well how do you know when its eight o’clock? Eccles: I’ve got it written down on a piece of paper. 3 The above exert is a rather neat juxtaposition. It interlaces and fuses the two reactive substances of time and language together. The idea of writing the time down on a piece of paper very nearly makes complete sense, were it not for the undeniable Chronos ticking and rendering the said piece of paper inaccurate for twelve or twentyfour hours, before the paper becomes correct again. It could well work, like the cycle of a clock, but with the disadvantage of paper biodegrading at a more rapid rate. I explored a similar and simplistic idea as a basis for a second year piece of work at Northbrook College. (See fig 1.) My piece of work displayed the time represented on a typewritten piece of graph paper. The caption also has a different time stated; “this picture was taken at 14:02”. And, for a “third time”, so to speak, the camera’s time and date imprint was selected and can be seen to the bottom left in electronic digits. The organic and relaxed aesthetics seem to adhere well with the concept of time or no time; the moving of the sun and the rotating of the earth; the light falling on morning trees; nature not Chronos. For example, the wooden base, the torn paper and the crucial and maybe critical aspect, the shadow lying across the image. When considering all three images from this piece, one can notice the shadow changing and moving between them. The figures or numbers shown are somewhat fixed. With all three “time’s” contradicting each other, the audience could well appreciate the fallacy or delusion of the steady mechanical tick-tock that beats from buildings and from electronic devices for eternity around us. But there is also an intrinsic, but not mechanical, beating of something happening around us. Time as we know it or possibly don’t.

Exert from ‘The Goon Show’, Series 7, Episode 19. “The Mysterious Punch-Up-The-Conker”. First broadcast 7th February 1957. Script by Spike Milligan and Larry Stephens, produced by Pat Dixon. Transcribed by Kurt Adkins, correction by Paul Webster. Additional corrections and sourced from http://www.thegoonshow.net/. 3

Figure 1. Untitled. 2008. Andrew Alfred Charles Cooper.

…This picture was taken at 14:02…

…This picture was taken at 14:03…

…This picture was taken at 14:04…

I have recently been made aware of the short stories of Argentine born, Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986). Aside from a fiction writer, Borges’ work included poetry, interpretive essay and literary critique. Much of his writings are concerned with the ideas and the nature of time, infinity, mirrors and reality. The particular story I am most inspired and curious by, within the ‘collected fictions’ 4 is entitled The Secret Miracle (p. 124), which was first published in 1944. Here is an outline of the story with exerts from the original text in inverted commas. A playwright, living in Prague named Jaromir Hladík was the author of an unfinished tragedy, ‘The Enemies’ within a book entitled ‘A Vindication of Eternity’. It was about an inescapable game of chess between two families. The game had been started ‘many centuries in the past’…and the prize ‘was rumoured to be vast, perhaps even infinite.’ Hladík was arrested by the Nazi's and charged with being Jewish and opposing the Anschlus between Germany and Austria. He was sentenced to death by firing squad. ‘Hladík’s first emotion was simple terror’. But soon, he became enthralled in his unfinished tragedy, ‘The Enemies’. With two acts to write in a matter of days and confined to his cell, he noted that ‘time is a fallacy’, and prayed to god, requesting one more year to finish the play so he can ‘exist as the author of The Enemies’. On the fateful day, Hladík stood, waiting for the final order from the firing squad sergeant, but then, ‘the physical universe stopped’, including Hladík himself, standing paralysed, yet fully conscious, in place before the firing squad. After few contemplative days, he begins to understand that God had granted him the ‘Secret Miracle’. Paralysed before the immobilized firing squad’s bullets to finish his play. For one year. ‘He had no document but his memory…painstakingly, motionlessly, secretly, he forged in time his grand invisible labyrinth…He completed his play…he began a maddened cry, he shook his head, and the fourfold volley felled him. Jaromir Hladík Borges, Jorge Luis. (Trans.) Hurley, Andrew. Collected Fictions: Jorge Luis Borges. London: Penguin Books UK. 2000. 4

died on the twenty-ninth of March, at 9:02 A.M.’ Are we to believe this is possible? Did Jaromir Hladík receive this “miracle” from God? In times of great stress and turmoil, the human perception of time significantly changes. To reprise my title for this piece of writing…

…Holding your breath for a minute feels like an hour… holding your lover for an hour feels like a minute…tick, tock… Jaromir Hladík obsessed about his unfinished play. He gained little sleep in the confinement of his cell, spending most, if not all of the time, desperately attempting to construct the two final acts of his play. The concern of having only a few days disabled his mind. Focus was required and time was sought from somewhere, for when there is no time left, you must make it yourself. But where can this new time be made from? Alter your perception through attentiveness, panic and assimilation. A new title maybe…

…Watching ten minutes of a thrilling end to a film can be perceived as thirty minutes…playing a fun yet uneventful game of catch for ten minutes will more than likely be perceived as ten minutes…tock, tick. So, subjective eventfulness: the action-packed last ten minutes of this unremarkable film was endured and absorbed as though it was a solid thirty minutes. This film was, as written, a tremendously thrilling affair. During the now of actual and literal watching of the film’s finale, one would be unaware of any time passing. A slice of now is partitioned; a crease in a curtain; a fold; a fermata 5, possibly. So the passing - A fermata is a hold or pause. It is a component of musical notation that requests of the musician to hold a note longer that the note value would normally indicate. There is no mention as to how long this should be sustained and the discretion is left to the performer or conductor. It could be a pause of 5

is ephemeral, transient and indescribable in any terms. It is a moment-less, moment, whereby an observer cannot and will not grasp the tick tock, because it is only there before the event and after the event, not during. And, as one comes to realize the phenomenon is over, he or she, losing the sensation of the present and the nothingness, ponders the eventfulness of the thrilling film’s finale… “That was a long ten minutes. Was it not?” So is this miss-perception down to a strong focus, be it deliberate or not? According to wikiHow6 (see fig 2.) stopping time and falling into a fold or crease in time is possible. Peripheral concentration on the movement of the second hand of one’s watch as it ticks on its journey around its face will slow its gait to an almost a stop, before restarting at its regular and presumed and believed pace. This concentration or meditation can be hard to achieve deliberately and often is achieved spontaneously. For when we raise our head to a clock and experience a now or a happening of now, the second hand pauses, folds or fermates7 for longer than a second, or what we expect of a second. According to Dr John Rothwell, a scientist at the institute of neurology, “your brain fools you…it makes you think that you’ve seen the clock, not from the time your eyes arrived at it, but actually from the time your eyes started to move towards it, which could actually be about a 1/5 th of a second beforehand…[our] brain stretches time…rather than you living consciously in real time…your probably only consciously experiencing the world about half a second after it all happens”8. We become in that zone, in an unmemorable area of exposure; for to remember this occurrence lucidly then it would have to be a moment in time. A moment requires it self to be measured and collected, “little while”; “short time”; “bit”; “minute”; “instant” or “split second”. This descent and fall into no time is indeed no moment.

indefinite duration. 6 wikiHow is a ‘collaborative writing project’ to build the ‘world's largest…how-to manual’ online. 7 Fermates, is not a word of the English language. I intend it to be the verb of Fermata. 8 From Arena: Its Time for “Just a Minute”. Mary Dickinson (Dir.) BBC 2, 26th Dec. 2002. 59 mins.

Figure 2.

Within ‘The Secret Miracle’ by Jorge Luis Borges, this idea is explored rather conversely. Jaromir Hladík is searching for an extension of time that can be grasped and used efficiently. He becomes obsessed with the compulsion to want to finish his play The Enemies. And as the bullet flies to his head, it could be said that the wealth of thoughts, the subjective eventfulness he forms in his mind prolongs his perception down tempo, to allow him a whole year to finish his writing. But is it a year? I believe that if Jorge Luis Borges were characterising God as acting upon time then he would have allowed Hladík a desk and pen and not just the decisive moment between life and death. If he was given this gift from God, including the writing implements to finish his play then we should assume that the year in question was real time; or measured; a duration that had a acceptable point A and B; A mo-mented 9 moment that was perceived loudly and clearly as it were happening. But was it a year? No. We understand from the writing that 365 days was actually and literally not available. I could ask whether you believe in miracles. Do you believe in miracles? I don’t. Not even if it were secret, like some kind of destiny. Jaromir Hladík altered his perception and did not receive a gift from the divine. This prayer he makes acts as only a metaphor for his mangled and persecuted mind. At the moment of his death, his perception of time had decreased to a prolonged and neat crawl.

Mo – mented is my figure of speech/writing. I intend it to be understood as a clearly coherent moment in time, one that has duration that can, if required, be counted and perceived. 9

Part Two The decisive moment… ‘The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression...In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.’ 10 Simultaneous recognition? This is a synchronised happening of the event and the forms that make that moment or fraction of a second. The inclusion of the word “recognition” is an important one here. For the decisive moment that Henri CartierBresson expressed within his photography is something that can be grasped by anyone’s perception. The smallest moment can be a “great subject”. A study of time in its most brief consideration, recorded with its briefest of shutter speeds. (See fig 3.)

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. Quoted in: (Ed.) Hall J. and Ulanov B. Modern Culture and the Arts. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1972. p. 473. 10

Figure 3. Behind the Gare Saint â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Lazare, Pont de lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Europe Paris. 1932. Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In Behind the Gare Saint – Lazare, Pont de l’Europe, Paris, a brief yet measurable and theatrical shutter of time has been captured. This is not frozen time but in fact more a thawing of time, so to speak. We know this through the evidence of the noticeable blur from the figure of the man in leaping motion from the ladder over the pools of water. It is, technically speaking, possibly 1/8 th of a seconds worth of time that has been, of course, photo-drawn on paper with light reacting silver halide salts from an negative enlarger. The dilemma, predicament and maybe contradiction of photography, is how to capture the pure present. This following quote, on the subject matter of clouds, is juxtaposed in relation to the street photography of Henri CartierBresson… ‘The simulacra in clouds are evasive. The infinite chance through which they are created is never more than a slow or rapid succession of unstable moments, fluctuating forms hardly glimpsed before they start to disperse. The eye that seizes upon them knows they will evade it…astonishment can only be aroused and increase when the spectacle continues, resisting the outliving perception, revealing itself in the end to be less transient than the ephemeral being that has surprised it.’ 11 (See fig 4.) As beings we can perceive a more than transient “spectacle” than the photographic or literacy description of and event can achieve. The rousing photograph of clouds you will see is a measured slice of time. If I were to view the said clouds at the very formation illustrated, I would be seizing the moment. Although I know, albeit subconsciously, that the seized partition of time will end. I only become aware of this furthermost part as the “form” of the clouds change or the appearance of the flat-capped man in front of Cartier-Bresson’s camera moves on to his day duties. At this point the event of the now is over. Then, etc, etc, etc…”astonishment” will escalate and soar as the “outliving perception” fades and the next wave of cirrus clouds percolate themselves to the adjoining event post or when the aforementioned subject in the Cartier-Bresson photograph splatters and subsequently sloshes on his way through the soaked street. Role on the next event, please. (The rolling on of the event is furthermore an event).

Caillois, Roger, ‘L’Écriture des pierres’. Quoted in: Montier, Jean Pierre. Henri Cartier-Bresson And The Artless Art. London: Thames And Hudson Ltd. 1996. p. 98. 11

Figure 4. Sky. 2008. Andrew Alfred Charles Cooper.

‘When, for instance, does a photographic image start? And when does it end?’12 When we view a photographic image that maybe we personally captured, be it family snaps or end of year art project, we see a duration. The shutter opened, and then closed its door, in a measured amount of time. The photograph itself has not a single start or an end. In fact it never begins. What is the pressing of the shutter…is it not the beginning? It is a kind of practical start. For I can say to my friend “I’ll meet you at the cinema at 8 o’clock”. And on another occasion I can say to my other friend “press the shutter realise cable when the train goes by that tree”. I arrived to the aforementioned cinema at 8 o’clock precisely. I squeezed the button on the end of the cable with pinpoint accuracy. But I was both, behind schedule with my date, and a slack photographer. In fact I was infinitely late. Measurements of time can only, like shutter speeds, increase, and increase. This is why it is a quandary to tell the time to someone, no matter how accurate. For instance, the time could be 11.02 and 500 milliseconds. Although I am wrong, incalculably and immeasurably wrong. ‘That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.’13 This example of one of Zeno’s14 paradoxes, explains the conundrum of Chronos. It is called the dichotomy paradox. Supposing you need to walk to the train station. Before you can get there, you must walk half the distance. And then walk the next half, being a quarter of the original distance. Before travelling a fourth, before an eighth, before one-sixteenth and so on. This is an unworkable scenario. For you cannot complete an infinite number of tasks. Thus, the photographic image that Yve Lomax questions does not have a beginning or an end, but an indescribably, boundless and absurd, yet completely possible infinite number of events that spark lines from left to right, up and down, from a horizontal line of many. So time is a ‘horizon of being’15, existence itself is the event and it’s many, many past, present, and future

Lomax, Yve. Sounding The Event, Escapades In Dialogue And Matters Of Art, Nature And Time. London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. 2005. p. 5. 13 Aristotle. (Trans) Waterfield, Robin, (Ed.) Bostock. David. Physics (Oxford World's Classics). UK: Oxford University Press. 2008. VI, Part 9, p. 161. 14 Zeno of Elea, (ca. 490 BC – ca. 430 BC). A pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, cited by Aristotle for his “paradoxes”. 15 Heidegger, Martin. (Trans) Macquarrie, John & Robinson, Edward. Being And Time. UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 1962. p. 488. 12

signposts. Being has in fact ‘a constant lack of totality’16. There is no point A, point B, and no structure. It’s the beginning of a track race. Time stops for the starter gun to fire. The athletes experience a zone of here and now. The aspiration is to run the measured distance in the shortest time. But it can never, ever start, because a start, a pulling of the trigger cannot be organised ‘prior to the event’17 as we have already established through the dichotomy paradox. But is the present unquestionably an infinite number of events? ‘Looking at a digital clock you see numbers flash fast before your eyes. There is just enough time to catch sight of a number that offers the belief that the present moment is – now – 30 seconds past 3 p.m. However, when time is in the process of interrupting and splitting open the present moment of itself you find time going – splitting – in two directions at once. Yes, it goes in the direction of the presentbecoming-past and, simultaneously, it goes in the direction of the present-becomingfuture. And it is this going in two directions at once, this splitting, that makes what has just happened and what is about to happen come to co-exist.’ 18 We know that the present cannot be distinguished. It will not be pinpointed. So now, in our minds, lets say, “It no longer exists.” But, what are the past and the future, and what of them? The past has already happened and was once described as the present and the future will happen in time ahead and become the once described present. Since these two other terms on the time line of being were at a one pivotal point chronicled as the present, then I can also render them as non-existent. They “coexist” and are one. We are as human beings forever waiting for something to happen and asking ‘has it happened? Is it going to happen?’ 19. This togetherness of the past – present – future means that we are drifting or floating. Our ‘hesitation is hovering’ 20 above all three entities at once. We are free in decision. Swept up in a pure present… Heidegger, Martin. (Trans) Macquarrie, John & Robinson, Edward. Being And Time. UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 1962. p. 286. 17 Lomax, Yve. Sounding The Event, Escapades In Dialogue And Matters Of Art, Nature And Time. London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. 2005. p. 5. 18 Ibid. p. 99. 19 Ibid. p. 100. 20 Ibid. p. 101. 16

Part Three Real time, gnawing into the future… ‘In the fraction of second which covers the briefest possible perception of light, billions of vibrations have taken place, of which the first is separated from the last by an interval which is enormously divided. Your perception, however, instantaneous, consists then in an incalculable multitude of remembered elements; and in the truth every perception is already memory. Practically we only perceive the past, the pure present being the invisible progress of the past gnawing in to the future’. 21 This view by Bergson, states that we have an intuitive understanding of time. He describes this “pure present” as being different to a practical one. Speaking practically, it is true that we can only understand what has gone before, as the present is untouchable. Perception is the comprehension of an event. But we are in a well hole that contains remnants of the past and future living together. So no pure anything can 21

Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory USA: MIT Press. 1991. p. 194.

be perceived. It is quite possible to experience the present and to maybe become smothered by it or oppositely under-whelmed by it. But, we perceive nothing and everything at the same time. With arms out stretched wide. The left arm, grabbing all memories, all events forever, and the right arm searching the freedom of what’s to come perpetually. Technically speaking, to freeze a moment or object without film or digital blur, the shutter speed, be it a moving image or stills camera, has to be faster than the movement itself. If this is so, then the image will appear, decisive. More crucially, your perception of it will be that of an instant. When in actuality, the image you are seeing is a 1/125 of a second, or a 1/250 of a second, or a 1/500 of a second, or a 1/1000 of a second, or a 1/2000 of a second, or a 1/4000 of a second and so on. This is a both a number and a speed of camera operation and thus, can only increase or grow in rapidity. How close can we practically get to a present moment; a flash of now; a divine closeness to infinity? (See fig 5). These chronological sequences of images are taken with a high-speed camera. They were created to visually represent and comprehend the idea of ‘reversible laminar flow’. 22 The red drop that falls in the blue dyed water has no time to mix together and ‘is reformed as the drop at the top of the emerging jet’.23 Dr. David Gorham and Dr. Ian Hutchings undertook the experiment at the Cavendish Laboratory within the University of Cambridge. They used a moving image camera that processed the event, lasting approximately 150 milliseconds. Interestingly, the series of images begin and end with the same starting point, the red droplet. It goes through many stages; a perfectly sheered droplet; a ‘coronet’ 24 to a manifesting fountain. And since this event, I speak of, cannot be on-looked or even perceived in real time then it could be said that it never happened at all. That is until the decisive moment of man recording the event with the newfound knowledge and technical expertise. Now, it is viewed, not at our level of interpretation, but viewed none the less, in another realm of reality and in fact another realm of real time.

Marten, Michael. Chesterman, John. May, John. Trux, John. Worlds Within Worlds. A Journey into the Unknown. London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. 1977. p. 18. 23 Ibid. p. 18. 24 Ibid. p. 18. 22

Figure 5. Untitled. 1977. Dr. David Gorham & Dr. Ian Hutchings.

So now it exists. A world within a world, a moment of a happening is appreciated. For a tree falling in the woods only prevails when it is sighted. What do we mean by real time? The writer and theorist Mary Anne Doane discovers that ‘The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition, 1989) defines real time as “the actual time during which a process or event occurs, esp. one analysed by a computer, in contrast to time subsequent to it when computer processing may be done, a recording replayed, or the like”. [Mary Anne Doane, continues] In other words, real time is the time of the now, of the taking place of events – it is specifically opposed to the subsequent, the after.’25 To argue or possibly add to The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition, 1989) it could be asked how to term an Event? As we have already, discovered (possibly), our pure present is a mirage of splits and junctures of time that both include the past and the future, incalculably at once. So to say that once a computer has processed an image file or a recording of a film is played we are no longer in the realm of the now, the real time is over. No, in fact a new one has just begun, like a washing cycle at the laundrette, with no beginning or end. It just spins for eternity. Having said this paradox, it relates back to something I mentioned at the beginning of the piece of writing. As with scheduling time, we can write a date or time down on a piece of paper and fulfil the occasion in person. I can practically; also say “I am the star role in a film, being recorded now, in real time”. I may watch the footage back tomorrow when the film mutates in to the realm of the after. But the more one thinks about these instances, the more lucidly it comes to the surface that real time is everyone and at once everywhere. For everything and everyone has to be somewhere at any one point. (See fig 6.) The Belgium born artist Francis Alÿs formulated a piece of work that seems to explore the idea of real time rather effectively. He is represented by the David Zwirner gallery in New York and works with a range of media and in 1997 he presented a five-minute video piece showing the ‘pushing a hefty block of ice through

Anne Doane, Mary. ‘Real Time: Instantaneity and the Photographic Imaginary’. In: Green, David, Lowry, Joanna. (Ed). Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Brighton: Photoforum & Photoworks. 2006. p. 24. 25

Figure 6. Still from: Paradox of Praxis 1. 1997. Francis Al每s.

the streets of Mexico City over a nine hour Period.’ 26 Entitled the Paradox of Praxis 1, it features the “artist” at first, ‘hunched over a formidably large cube, straining to move it. Later, as it slowly melts and shrinks in size to that of a brick, then an ice cube, then a pebble, Alÿs is able to manoeuvre it much more easily…until finally it disappears into a small and abject puddle of water on the sidewalk.’ 27 Many questions can be raised concerning and regarding this piece of performance, happening and/or event. Alÿs, in affect has nothing to show for his endeavour, as the art, or object in question (the ice), has charmingly melted away. Although having said that, I am more curious as to the parallels between the event and the edited replay of the nine-hour happening. Does it stand as record to the event? – Considering that his audience only receive a user friendly five minutes that can be absorbed and comprehended with ease, it could be seen as a well-executed piece of documentary. But, documentary is an archive of, amongst others things, an event, a day, a duration. This edit is at once, a new piece of art or film and in its own right needs a file or archive of it own. Importantly, it is not a record of the nine-hour slog in Mexico City that Alÿs endured. But having said all this, a nine-hour recording, in real time is still in actuality a remembrance of the event. And thus, a new realm of the real time is grasped. His audience gather for the event, of contemplating, the event replayed. Many, many times, many more present durations, durations of moments splitting. Real time is a precious juncture that Jacques Derrida has mused over… ‘An extraordinary extended technical reproducibility serves to mimic living flux, the irreversible, spontaneity, that which carries singularity away in the movement of existence without return. When we watch television, we have the impression that something is happening only once: this is not going to happen again, we think, it is “living”, live, real time, whereas we also know, on the other hand, it is being produced by the strongest, the most sophisticated repetition machines’ 28 Derrida seems to be tampering the edges of a possible desire for the real time, a sensation of a Mo – mented 29 moment. Laying claim to the real is an aspiration for Kwon, Miwon. ‘Francis Alÿs, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles’, Artforum. February 2008. p. 281. Ibid. p. 281. 28 Derrida, Jacques. Quoted in: Anne Doane, Mary ‘Real Time: Instantaneity and the Photographic Imaginary’. In: Green, David, Lowry, Joanna. (Ed). Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Brighton: Photoforum & Photoworks. 2006. p. 25. 29 Mo – mented is my figure of speech/writing. I intend it to be understood as a clearly coherent 26 27

all. Watching live, whether it is, a recorded event, or a feature film is more than a solitary experience. And by live, I can mean, a real time broadcasted event, an occasion in the flesh or in fact any situation that warrants a perception of the now. We pursue ‘simultaneity of event and reception promised by television.’ 30 We are sentient to these “sophisticated repetition machines” that Derrida has spoken of, which also include the territory of the ‘digital real time’31. For instance ‘the lure of the Internet is the lure of connectivity, of being in touch, of synchronicity, and of availability – 24/7/365: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year’. 32 The Internet may be a virtual domain, but it is the notion of the interactivity, the eventfulness, this “synchronicity”, and importantly, its stake in time that is what fountainheads the awareness that its real; real time. I would like to bring photography back into the equation. It is in fact ‘the historical predecessor’33 to all advancement to the instant, in context of the moving image, a digital domain and television, etc. And as I have written and shown before, technological advancements are probing for ‘the smallest unit of time, the fastest possible shutter speed, and the fixing of movement in the constrained framework of the instant.’34 (See fig 7). In Dag Alveng’s, The Photographer Shoots Himself the photographer in question is held in an impossible pose, ‘a body on the edge… accessible only to instantaneous photography.’35 Mary Anne Doane goes on to explain in her essay that ‘it is the antithesis of a pose, since it cannot be held for any length of time’.36 This depends on, of course, how to define a “length of time”. Her statement is correct to a degree, but in more ways a false statement. It highlights the contradictions of photography, time and duration. The pose in question has been held, albeit for a very compacted duration.

moment in time, one that has duration that can, if required, be counted and perceived. 30 Anne Doane, Mary. ‘Real Time: Instantaneity and the Photographic Imaginary’. In: Green, David, Lowry, Joanna. (Ed). Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Brighton: Photoforum & Photoworks. 2006. p. 24. 31 Ibid. p. 24. 32 Ibid. p. 24. 33 Ibid. p. 25. 34 Ibid. p. 25. 35 Ibid. p. 28. 36 Ibid. p. 28.

Figure 7. The Photographer Shoots Himself. 1981. Dag Alveng.

In fact it was in motion as the shutter release cable, in Alveng’s hand, was squeezed. It is only practically perceived in an after realm (the realm of the photographic image) of the real time, through the proficiency and mastery of this “instantaneous” medium of photography. Much like poor Jaromir Hladík, Dag Alveng is also, in a way, paralyse

End ‘I am going to call my autobiography the fermata, even though “fermata” is only one of the many names I have for the fold. “Fold” is obviously, another. Every so often, usually in the fall…I discover that I have the power to drop into the fold. A fold-drop is a period of time of variable length during which I am alive and ambulatory and thinking and looking, while the rest of the world is stopped, or paused.’37 The decisive moment; holding of breath; holding of lover; the panic at the checkout; the tennis ball preparing to be ripped; the bullet towards the head; the concentrated eventfulness that sends someone into the zone, so to speak. These durations of no length, the fermata of indefinite duration, cannot and will not be captured or recorded by film or any technology. Freezing time is a paradox. The recognition and impression that a moment has been recorded is there, but again, the question of the moment. A moment is duration, and the precise now does not purely exist. It is at one, with the past and the future. A 35mm SLR is incapable of operating an infinite number of procedures. In fact it can barely operate one. For the occasion of squeezing the shutter release is indefinable. Real life is both frozen and in flux at once. It could be said we are forever waiting for the next moment. But how can it ever arrive? – If the now never materialises. As Yve Lomax says, and as I have written before, our ‘hesitation is hovering’ above the time line of existence. 37

Baker, Nicholson. The Fermata London: Vintage Books. 1994. p. 3.

Bibliography Books Aristotle. (Trans) Waterfield, Robin, (Ed.) Bostock. David. Physics (Oxford World's Classics). UK: Oxford University Press. 2008. Baker, Nicholson. The Fermata. London: Vintage Books. 1994. Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. USA: MIT Press. 1991. Borges, Jorge Luis. (Trans.) Hurley, Andrew. Collected Fictions: Jorge Luis Borges. London: Penguin Books UK. 2000. Fowler, H. W. & Fowler, F. G. (Ed). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Fifth Edition. London: Oxford University Press. 1964. Green, David, Lowry, Joanna. (Ed). Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Brighton: Photoforum & Photoworks. 2006. Heidegger, Martin. (Trans) Macquarrie, John & Robinson, Edward. Being And Time. UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 1962. Lomax, Yve. Sounding The Event, Escapades In Dialogue And Matters Of Art, Nature And Time. London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. 2005. Marten, Michael, Chesterman, John. May, John. Trux, John. Worlds Within Worlds. A Journey into the Unknown. London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. 1977. Montier, Jean Pierre. Henri Cartier-Bresson And The Artless Art. Thames & Hudson Ltd. London. 1996.

Journals Kwon, Miwon. ‘Francis Alÿs, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles’, Artforum. February 2008. p. 281.

Internet Sites http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp? title=s07e19_the_mysterious_punch_up_the_conker, September 2008. http://www.wikihow.com/Make-the-Second-Hand-on-a-Clock-Appear-to-Stop, December 2008.

Television & Radio Arena: Its Time for “Just a Minute”. Mary Dickinson (Dir). BBC 2, 26th Dec. 2002. 59 mins. The Goon Show Classics: What Time is it, Eccles? Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan (Performers). Previously Volume 9, BBC Radio Collection. (Audio CD). 1999. BBC Radio 4, First broadcast, 1957.