Temporalitet i visuell kultur. Om samtidens heterokrona estetiker

Abstract

In contemporary society temporalities in different scales coexist, cooperate and collide. Clock time serves as a main reference for time, although a lot of processes have nothing to do with clock time and can’t be measured by its scales. One of the dissertation’s points of departure is that temporal narratives is a key factor for affecting how people act and think, and therefore there is a need for visualizations, conceptual figurations and cognitive objects for complex forms of time. The dissertation evolves around art works, visualizations and theories that deal with today’s multiple temporal forms and narratives. One of the questions the dissertation sets out to answer concerns how temporality is visualized in contemporary art and visualizations. It also aims to demonstrate the relevance of visual studies in the new field of environmental humanities. A number of temporal concepts are explored in relation to art works. One such concept is heterochrony, a term referring to a multifaceted temporality, that art theorist Nicolas Bourriaud claims is common in contemporary art. Another is timescapes, a term for an entangled temporality, described by sociologist Barbara Adam, and chronoscopy coined by philosopher Paul Virilio, referring to an extremely short-termed perspective. Space of flows and space of places are concepts formulated by sociologist Manuel Castells, denoting the spatiotemporal logics that have emerged in the network society, where citizens simultaneousley can exist in physical and virtual spacetimes. Also two concepts for a vast time span are discussed: anthropocene, a suggested new geological era, and the long now, a perspective formulated by the artist and musician Brian Eno. One conclusion is that complex and sensous understandings of temporality can be accomplished through art works and visualizations. Artistic expressions have the potential to inspire, worry and affect viewers and produce narratives of the multiple temporalities embedded in climate changes. Multiple forms of temporality can be found in the discussed works, and the narratives that emerge are entangled and heterogenous and speak of heterochrony, chronoscopy, and anthropocene, that is, of temporal forms that cannot easily be related to a human lifetime or to everyday understandings of time.