“Deep Time Rapid Time” is a laboratory/training site for sensing and rethinking temporality. At the center of the investigation is a philosophical question about how we sense time which, spurse argues, holds deep practical and political implications for our contemporary situation and for our rapidly changing future.
Deep time is a term which references time measured in the thousands, millions, or billions of years. Rapid time, conversely, indicates the capacity of immensely scaled systems to change in very short time periods. Across scales and speeds, time is more than simply one event following another—time is a form of qualitative transformation prior to and parallel to being a form of quantitative measure. And our general inability to conceive and engage time as such presents a complex problem when it comes to enacting new relationships to everything from ecologies, to advanced technologies, to emerging forms of government. Across the globe we are rapidly producing many new forms of time, from the half-life of radioactive materials which can be millions of years, to vast ecosystems that will have radically changed in 30 years. “How do we understand these new forms of temporality,” spurse asks “and respond with the creation of new forms of collective subjectivity, logics of sense, and new conceptual systems?”
“Deep Time Rapid Time” begins with questions such as these and aims to address them at levels beyond abstraction or representation—viewing them as embodied worldly problems which can be creatively and collaboratively engaged to create “new modes of enaction” using a wide range of experimental strategies. As such, the project is also conceived as an “elaborate emergent trial/game,” with materials and logics drawn from the realms of clothing and textile design, plant biology and engineering, paleontology, architecture, philosophy, rare book holdings, augmented reality/visualization research, and numerous other sources.
spurse’s installation at Grand Arts is the culmination of three years of ongoing residencies, research trips, and collaborations with local and international researchers in a variety of fields. The project has developed with generous assistance, collaboration and loans from the Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, MO; the Land Institute, Salina, KS; Glen Rockers/ Paleosearch, Inc., Hays, KS; Sean White, Columbia University, NY; David Jensenius, New York, NY; Kathryn Zaremba and students of the Kansas City Art Institute; the Peary-Mac-Millan Arctic Museum, Brunswick, ME; Richard Wyma, Nunavut Parks & Special Places, Nunavut; Eva Eseemailee Artist, Nunavut; Michele Bertol Planning and Lands, City of Iqaluit, Nunavut; Mathew Nuqingaq, Artist, Nunavut, and many others. The project also includes two parallel research projects: Crooked River in First and Third Persons, a 48-hour way-finding experiment as part of the Cleveland Ingenuity Festival, 2008, and Eleven Listening Posts for an Entangled Agent: Denver, as part of Dialog: City, 2008.
NONE OF THIS WORK COULD HAVE BEEN DONE WITHOUT THE REMARKABLE COLLABORATION OF EVERYONE AT GRAND ARTS AND THE FOLLOWING PEOPLES. WE THANK THEM GREATLY:
DEEP TIME RAPID TIME
2007-2009
A project by spurse presented by Grand Arts in collaboration with:
Bruce Bradley and the Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, MO; Stan Cox and the Land Institute, Salina, KS;
Glen Rockers, and Paleosearch, Inc., Hays, KS;
Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum, Brunswick, ME;
Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum, Iqaluit, Nunavut.
Data Driven Sound Navigation in collaboration with David Jensenius, NY, NY and Sean White, Columbia University, NY;
Data Driven Lighting Structures in collaboration with Kyle Klipowicz, Chicago, IL;
Nomadic Clothing/Architecture System in collaboration with: Kathryn Zaremba and students from the Spurse/KCAI
Augmented Clothing Systems Seminar, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO;
Sensing Temporality Colthing Design Workshop with: Erin Manning, Montreal,
Canada and Brian Massumi, Montreal, Canada;
Nunavut Consultants: Beth Beattie, Michele Bertol, Eva Eseemailee, Brian Lunger, Matt Nuqingaq, Mary Ellen Thomas,
Danny Wade, Richard Wyna;
Building, Fabrication and Planting Assistants:
Brandon Barr, Sara M. Cramer, Evan Davies, Andy Erdrich, Joe Fuller, Amelia Ishmael, Colin Liepelt, Stewart Lossee, Sarita Mahinay, Julie Malen, J. Ashley Miller, Carmen Moreno, Charlie Mylie, Justin Randel, Andrew Roth, Paul A. Smith Jr., Elisha
Stetson, Destiny Vinley, Simon Wunderlich;
Case Design Assistants: Carolyn Hopkins and Heather Lawless;
Lighting Assistants: Colin Leipelt and J. Ashley Miller.
5. entering main gallery: the 1’ space between chalk cliff curtain and gallery wall
6. chalk cliff curtain from inside gallery
DeepTime RapidTime