What Do We Know Of Time When All We Can Know For Real Is Now?

Andrea Williams / USA

What is time from inside, what is time from outside? The Moments project investigates the length of 'a moment' of attention and of the tension between the internal and the external experience of time. Using real-time algorithms this dynamic dual-screen installation situates the viewer in the center of the emotional, philosophical and phenomenological debate on the substance of time and lived experience. The project collated video for a year, recording close to a thousand separate clips of noticing, interstitial glances that show a moment occurred. Contrasting this is a series of extended walking self-portrait video 'derives' through the streets of Hong Kong. In the material a central character moves through the neon cityscape and crowded back alleys in continuous framed shots. The video is treated, graded and re-processed and frames re-played by algorithmic editing in real-time in any order, at any speed, in any direction. On one screen the works shows discrete moments of sense and attention, on the other screen a central figure surrounded at every moment by a maelstrom of temporal shift in one of the most complex cities in the world. Positioning the viewer in the center of the argument for time.