our present is marked by a mechanical, predefined time. Days are divided into 24 hours and each hour is divided into 60 minutes by 60 seconds.
We wake up following a clock, catch the bus at a specific time, start work at the exact time, work for a defined amount of time, try to fit duties, pleasures, pastimes and meetings into the time we have left, sleep at least a specific amount of hours to feel rested.
Having a shared time convention is certainly an advantage for many aspects of life in a capitalist society. Being synchronised* makes us an efficient organism in a perspective where optimising productivity comes before the rest.
- However, what would our ‘spontaneous’ rhythm be if we did not have a common time frame to adhere to?
- How would we feel if we had no schedules, if we could not be late, if we had no deadlines?
- What effects does this kind of time-scanning have on us and on the way we relate to the world?
We tried to reflect on this by communicating with the sound of our bodies. We didn't really find an answer, but we realised that the real ‘cost’ of scanning time this way is the pressure of having to do instead of being able to do, the uncomfortable feeling of never having enough, of losing.
Several people say they feel better, free from many of these pressures, when they are on holiday, and we often associate this feeling with not working. But could this feeling depend more on less time pressure than on not working per se?
Contemporary work and time are extremely conjoined. Perhaps the division of time in this way is directly dependent on the way we want to work today.
- Should we revolutionise work in order to revolutionise time? To take this pressure off our shoulders?