Continuity and Other Temporalities

Abstract

Duration, tempo, rhythm, pause, continuation, repetition are terms familiar to choreography and music. There are ways to make them coalesce and resonate, enhance or diminish the content of the work in question. Various temporalities exist in nature as well as in social constructs. I place a metronome on the rocks, right by the shoreline. The day is windy and gray, the waves riding at a steady pace, similar and dissimilar to the metronome. I am interested in the meeting point of human-imposed patterns of movement and rhythm with natural elements, comprising layers of continuity—e.g. an uninterrupted state maintained over a period of time, acquiring an endless quality.We are immersed in soundscapes all the time, sounds that have rhythm. Humans have found ways to measure rhythm and to create systems of time tracking. These devices have specificities—the metronome, the hourglass, the kitchen timer, the clock. Devices designed to maintain a steady pace and have the capacity to organise time, giving shape to something that is amorphous and thus to create an illusion that everything is not happening at the same time. I place a metronome on a pillar by the ocean, a collision of temporalities taking place. A boat passes by at a steady pace, the waves move according to the rhythm of the sea, the clouds drift slowly. Everything coalesces in a moment of multilayered sound and movement until the wind knocks the metronome over.