IN-KIND DISRUPTIONS

Abstract

The glowing light of cinema, which continues to claim supremacy as a collective site for evolving senses of time, has fundamentally changed since its inception, from exclusively projected light to primarily emitted light. Digital, rather than analog projectors, dominate in personal rather than public spheres. The physiological and behavioral effects of those technologies manipulate our biological clocks, creating an entanglement of time-sensing. Similarly, the art of cinema now relies far more upon energy-intensive materials and methods, from equipment to image manufacturing and data flow. This essay takes the twelve-hour clock as a slanted optic to address those profound shifts, choosing a handful of moving-image artists to feature, including Deborah Stratman, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, and Mikael Kristersson, who are attempting to find alternative temporal modes of depicting the hyperobjectiveness of eternity, ecocrises, dystopias, and deep time on screen.

Keywords:

• cinema
• circadian
• environment
• time
• light

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For this line of inquiry, I owe a debt to my colleagues at the University of Colorado Boulder with whom I’m hosting a Mellon Sawyer Grant in 2020–21: Brianne Cohen, Lori Peek, and Andy Cowell.