Context (Pool) 5: Art & Longue Durée

Longue Durée refers to the role of time in artistic projects. Regardless of the media employed, we explore how duration, long-term engagement, and patience shape artistic practices. In a moment when we are often trained to prioritize efficiency, immediacy, and optimization, it can be difficult to commit to certain forms of projects — those that ask viewers for patience, sensitivity and empathy. In this seminar, we take the time to examine and analyze both historical and contemporary long-term projects. This includes large-scale works, life-art practices, durational performances, and works of Slow Cinema.

Whereas classical long-term art often documents time (and life), contemporary art increasingly produces time as a process, a system, or an ecology. In extreme cases, the focus shifts from the duration of a work to the duration of a life model. We will therefore engage with works by On Kawara, Hanne Darboven, James Turrell, Brian Eno, and Michael Snow (historical) as well as with contemporary positions such as Black Quantum Futurism, the Karrabing Film Collective, Cooking Section, and Katie Paterson. From a theoretical perspective, we will reflect on diverse concepts and perceptions of time, including elliptical time, postcolonial temporalities, deceleration, and approaches from geontology. Finally, we will discuss your own works and project ideas in terms of their potential to sensitize viewers to time, to disrupt habitual temporal experience, or to stretch and expand it.

About the lecturer:

Yvonne Wilhelm, an artist and professor, is part of the artist duo known as knowbotiq. She teaches at the ZHdK MFA with a particular emphasis on queer-feminist and post-/decolonial perspectives. Her artistic practice centers around post-digital time-based formats; installative-performative settings, and research-driven art.