Timekeeper (2022-23)

A story of timekeeping is a question of who it is that keeps time-us, or all that is not us. Calling upon thematic interests in philosophical and physical concepts of time and consciousness, George Iskander (PhD student, Physics department, UChicago) and Autumn Ahn (MFA candidate, Performance Studies, SAIC) propose the innate humanism living through the question of time as a broad human concern about security and the desires for predictability. Time traveling through this experimental collaboration by way of early star charts, such as the Yeolcha Bunyajido, a planisphere from Korea’s Joseon Dynasty completed in 1395, we turn to film, the man-made invention to reproduce time and image, and photographic processes to explore the conceptual dimensions of timekeeping. Taking into account the embedded scientific apparatuses of this point of view, what did it mean to humanity, to culture, to etch a map of the night sky into a slab of black marble? How did the invention of astronomy define the course of human consciousness Manipulating the technical devices of capturing images using an analogue and handmade approach, our final illuminations of the night sky, from time etched on to a contemporary globe using bijective mapping, explore the wonder born in awe of the natural world and the sense of connection to the material concerns of invention.