Time only happens once. Time is precious because it cannot be reproduced. Time is irrevocable. We try to make good use of time, but maybe time tries to make good use of us. What would happen if you tried to escape from the clutches of time? Or if you let yourself be led by a structure that allows you to lose yourself in time?

Participate in a walking tour created from a concept by Jacqueline Schoemakers. Participants receive a topographic map and have to do their utmost to follow the straight line that is drawn on it. The tour starts at the Paradiso, but where it ends is anybody’s guess. There is no meaningful movement from A to B in this walk; there is no urgency to get anywhere. You can enjoy the walk at any time during the day or night, even after the festival – and it is best experienced alone. At 17:30 each day during the festival there is a get together to exchange thoughts about Time Travelled and Time Lost with others who have done the walk.

A map for Time Travelled and Time Lost and an information leaflet can be obtained at the festival desk. Informal get together each festival day at 17:30 in De Balie. Start is at Paradiso.

The exhibition at NIMk presents several installations, sound– and film works that explore different modalities of time. They seemingly halt the experience of time, deal with speed in the city, resist the sequential montage of classic cinema, or leave the visitor in suspension because action is continuously deferred. Immersive, pensive, scientifically precise or overwhelming, all these works tickle the brain and the senses.

The exhibition officially opens at 16:30, and will include public interviews with three of the featured artists: Daïchi Saïto, Juliana Borinski and Julien Maire.

Works by Joe Gilmore (UK), Julien Maire (FR),  Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (SI), Philipp Lachenmann (DE), Juliana Borinski (BR/DE),  Mark Fell (UK) and (on show only for the duration of the festival) Daïchi Saïto (JP/CA) will be shown.

Joe Gilmore
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(2012, installation)
The new generative sound piece by Joe Gilmore explores space, geometry and complexity through sound synthesis. The multi-speaker installation uses chaotic algorithms, and flocking / swarm synthesis. The sound ranges from short impulses scattered around the space in different configura- tions, to extended complex tones and chaotic noise signals.

Julien Maire
Perpendicular Cinema
(2011, installation, produced in collaboration with V2_lab)
Julien Maire’s Perpendiculair Cinema resists the directivity of the montage. A complex mechanical interface, made of blocks of reflective metal, inter- cepts, controls and models the clear and blurry areas of a projected slide. The slow scanning is similar to the assiduous attention of a researcher. This concentration resists the flow and focuses on details in an image and their conditions of appear- ance, looking for a grammar, a construction and a deconstruction of perspective and narrative. The three-dimensional effect and the materiality of the image and of the device that allows the development is accentuated. The installation reads a script that is perpendicular to the image in the optical space. The movement no longer appears in the equation of the difference between successive images but in the optical performance of a fluid, continuous real time.

Flip Dots Mirrors
(2011, installation)
Forty-eight flip-dots coated with first surface mir- rors (FS mirrors) reflect part of a slide image of people sitting on a tribune.

Tao Sambolec
City Velocities – Body Speeds
(2012, new work, commissioned by Sonic Acts, NIMk & STEIM)
City Velocities – Body Speeds focuses on the tactile experience of travelling at speed in an urban environment. It does not provide an inter- pretation; instead it embodies the phenomena of speed, re-creating the experience and thus con- fronting the visitor with its existence.

Philipp Lachenmann
Space_Surrogate I (Dubai)
(2000)
A half hour film made from a single image. A solitary airplane stands in the desert. Hot air, shimmering like a mirage, is the only perceivable sign of the passage of time. The 30’ film sequence was digitally produced from a one still picture.

Space_Surrogate II (GSG 9)
(2003)
A five seconds long film sequence from 1977 is transformed into an extremely slow moving still image of eight minutes. Nine men, members of the German anti terror squad GSG 9, cross the picture from left to right. The sequence was digitally produced by interpolating 11.000 artifi- cial images between 120 original film frames.

Juliana Borinski
Liquid Crystal Display
(2008–2009, installation)
In the expanded cinema installation Liquid Crystal Display a few drops of a crystalline solution are placed on an empty slide in a cus- tomised projector. The crystallisation process and all its associated movements are projected live. Using the projector’s heat, the reaction time varies from 20 minutes to a few hours (depending on the solution’s concentration and the temperature and humidity in the exhibition space). Each slide is replaced after the ‘image’ has stabilised.

Mark Fell
Factoid #3
(2011, installation)
Philosophy has investigated the linkage between the structure of consciousness and the structure of the present, but it has not taken sound into consideration. How does sound contribute to this linkage? Thinking of the repetitive temporal struc- tures of techno, or the prolonged tones of Tibetan music – some primary relationships between time, consciousness and sound could be imagined. Informed by recent studies in the psychopa- thology of time, Fell’s intense and confrontational installation Factoid #3 promotes a destabilised association between time, the self and sound. Phenomenological emphasis on flow, linearity, and the present as embedded in both the previous and the imminent, are rejected in favour of disas- sociated suprasequential nows. This work contains extremely bright flashing light, high intensity sound and generative temporal structures.

Screening from 23–26 February: Daïchi Saïto
Never a Foot Too Far, Even
(2011, double projection, 16 mm)
Appropriating a brief fragment from a 35 mm print of an old Kung Fu movie, Never a Foot Too Far, Even is an action movie without action. Presented in double-projection with two 16 mm film projectors and loopers, with images from two separate rolls overlaid to form a single image, the film focuses on an obscure figure who finds himself on a forest path, caught between perpetual motion and stasis.

During the festival, the exhibition is open from 24-26 February 11:00-19:00. Furthermore until 15 April 2012 the exhibition is open Tuesday through Friday 11:00-17:00, Saturday and Sunday 13:00-17:00.

Is the perception of time variable? And if so what happens to time if we are subjected to extreme circumstances. Will it cease to exist? Does it become an illusion? A discussion and analysis of such circumstances – environmental or musical.

With John Geiger (US), Catherine Christer Hennix (US/SE) and Bill Dietz (US).

John Geiger
Far Continents of the Mind

A lecture about brain responses to extreme physical and psychological stress and sensory inputs such as stroboscopic light, and the resulting displacement of time/space, including a discussion of Brion Gysin’s Dreamachine.

Catherine Christer Hennix & Bill Dietz
Round table

The composer Bill Dietz in conversation with Catherine Christer Hennix about her ideas relating to composition, music and time. The post-minimal compositions of mathematician and composer Catherine Christer Hennix elaborate on La Monte Young’s concepts. It could be said that they attempt to halt the listener’s experience of time. She sees her music as having no time at all.

Jean-Luc Godard famously stated that ‘[p]hotography is truth. The cinema is truth at 24 frames per second’. But cinema has long proven that this is not necessarily a definite truth. Indeed, film constantly works with time, rhythm and rearranging our perceptions of time. This session delves into the possibilities of different cinematic times.

With Peter Kubelka (AT) and Timothy Druckrey (US).

Peter Kubelka
Metric Film/Metric Time

A talk by Peter Kubelka, including a screening of Arnulf Rainer (1960, 7′, B&W) which combines an image track consisting of black and white frames with a soundtrack alternating white noise and silence. This film had a profound influence on the development of structural film.

Timothy Druckrey
Time Scene(s)

This illustrated talk assesses the conditions of the temporal in an array of approaches to the cinematic that defy the tropes of traditional film studies and yet provoke the possibilities invoked by a range of recent artistic projects. Time Scene(s) will confront an array of ‘temporalities’ engaged with the interrogation of systems that defy the normative flows of representability.

Emergency

The closing lecture by Hillel Schwartz is in the form of a series of rhymed sonnets.

Film frames competing to find a place in the viewers long term memory in an extremely slow development constituting a dense image reminiscence.

J.J. Murphy
Print Generation (1973–74, 50’00, 16 mm, stereo)

Print Generation by J.J. Murphy is a rarely screened structural gem that harnesses image and sound deterioration to its fullest. Murphy started with 60 one-second shots (a one minute film.) He then made 50 contact printed copies of each successive version, consciously degrading the film one ‘generation’ at a time. The film elegantly addresses the intricacies of memory and time: how we remember, what we remember, and how a fleeting ‘home movie’ reveals and recedes.

Separate tickets for Print Generation available.

Immerse yourself in a subtle drone, which after a while opens the portal to a different space, with Catherine Christer Hennix + The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage. Hennix’s post-minimal drones elaborate on La Monte Young’s concepts and attempt to halt our experience of time. The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage will play three concerts, which are meticulously adapted for the performance space. The group gathers a week in advance to prepare and develop the composition. All the musicians are at the forefront of contemporary music, exploring micro-tonality, just intonation and the space of sound.

‘As deep and heavy as the 1960’s recordings of La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music, but full of Hennix’ own musical and mathematical genius.’ – Marcus Boon

The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage consists of: Catherine Christer Hennix(US/SE),  Amelia Cuni (IT),  Franz Hautzinger (AT),  Paul Schwingenschlögl(AT),  Hillary Jeffery (UK) and  Robin Hayward (UK).

There is limited seating in the SMART Project Space. If you have a passepartout, please reserve a ticket for the performance you would like to attend at: reservations@sonicacts.com.

Music without time, music that seemingly disregards rhythm and timing, in which time simply passes. The five-hour evening Post Time includes compositions by Michael Pisaro, one of the most interesting American composers. Pisaro is a member of the Wandelweiser group whose compositions are usually sparing in their use of notes and extremely low in volume, leaving plenty of room for silence. Pisaro’s pieces fine-tune our perception of everyday sounds and allow the listener to experience real time, in a down to earth way, as the passing of time. They subtly explore harmony and the limits of hearing. His kindred spirit Taku Sugimoto, like Pisaro a guitarist and composer, has travelled from Japan for the festival. Other performers in this event include Konzert Minimal – an ensemble from Berlin that consists of the cream of contemporary musicians. Robin Hayward performs a solo concert of his compositions Nouveau Saxhorn Nouveau Basse and Plateau Square on microtonal tuba. The Post Time evening ends with a ‘heavy’ electronically amplified performance by The Pitch, who play a 40-minute piece from their Frozen Surfaces series.