For us space and time are intimately related but when you start to ask the very basic questions, that is when you no longer have a single definition for either.

What is space? What is time? How do we measure these two concepts? Can these be altered or is it fixed?

Ever since our last orientation (right before our trip) where I was introduced to Rivers of Shadows, the concept of space and time was sort of this realization of a realization; this moment of remembering what I’ve already have known but rearticulated in a way that deeply resonated with me and my own truths.

Time has always been a weird concept to fully wrap my head around and the more I began to connect the readings together and the more artists we began to connect with, the more my definition of time began to shift and evolve. We use this concept of time through planners and calender’s trying to plan ahead as if we have full control of time. We hold onto our memories and as a way to preserve and curate some moment of time that may distort that what actually may have happened. In one way or another we are always trying to manipulate the concept of time so that it is always in our favor.

Solnit ties these threads of thoughts together across time and spaces while drawing out these connections to where these moments of changes are happening in a way that just stuck onto the back of my brain. From her mentions of Muybridge’s motion studies on the trotting horses and his ability to freeze time in a way that was impossible to the human eye to the technological advances of railroads and how that had compressed time and space. To the ability to communicate from one part of the world to another accelerated due to railroad systems (one big step for globalization). In addition, the invention of motion films also meant that people could have this out of body experience in which they could time travel with their eyes and in a way space shrinks because one can travel without actually physically traveling. As society advances we are on this continuum of shrinking space and accelerating time.

I wanted to tie this to our discussions with Jan Kopp and Laurent Mulot because they made me question the relationship between humans and these two concepts. This notion of “suspended places” and what happens to a place when it becomes abandoned and no longer serves its initial purpose, to “suspended living” applied to immigrants when they do not have a place to call their own while living in exile. This led to our class questioning “well how does one define suspended places?” and to Jude’s mentioning of how a place is never truly suspended when it will always be inhabited in one way or another through other systems at play. I did not realize how this absence of humans in relation to space suspends time, not until I heard Laurent Mulot. This long term experience of “Middle of Nowhere” by Mulot was not only expressions of space, but most importantly a question of time. Through his photographs and experimental media that captured a couple within this town literally in the “Middle of Nowhere” called cook in Australia, he was able to encapsulate this place with “no time”. This couple was pretty much isolated from the rest of the world, with no media outlets to having little human interactions everyday entailed the same routine, isolation had suspended time or what Mulot calls it “infinitely recurring”. This is such a contrast to global cities such as Seattle where we are obsessed with speeding up time and technological advancements, what does this mean for human connection? This makes me realize the importance of art, and, specifically public spaces as art but also makes me questions its role in our generation in terms of striving towards posterity.