Lost in time

 

At some point between March and September of 2020, humanity lost track of time. We went from absolute dependence on systems of time generated by travel itineraries, the transport of goods, professional meetings, school classes, appointments, birthdays, and friendly dinners to a complete suspension time and of our agendas. While that suspension was accommodated by and perhaps even appreciated for those in a place of socioeconomic privilege, many did not have the luxury of losing track of time.

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To enhance the sensorial monotony that ensued from this loss of time we increased our online socialization—an effort to emulate, in some way, in-person encounters. Though soon, rather than meeting new people or struggling to maintain relationships in crowded, inconsistent Zoom calls, we began to befriend the rhythms of the sunrise and neighboring birds.

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In innumerable extreme cases those who spent time in intensive care units lost connection with time through a disruption of their circadian rhythms. Like biological units of time these rhythms regulate human physiology and behavior throughout the day based on exposure to light, and therefore deeply impact the human experience. Furthermore, patients receiving assisted ventilation to maintain their existence while in prolonged comas in the face of Covid-19 suffered from physical disconnection from their environment. Due to the loss of natural rhythms—the suspension of their internal clock—the ability to capture time after regaining consciousness is a struggle if not an impossibility. While the sun still rises and the seasons change the patient’s awareness of these cycles are detached.

The global pandemic subjected humanity—individually depending on chance and sociopolitical factors—to a spectrum of temporalities; a range that moved from the monotony of simple daily tedium and the lack of attention to when days began and ended to a total suspension of time.

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Psychologist Marc Wittmann explains how emotion is related to the perception of time, “...a succession of metarepresentations of the self across time provides a continuity of subjective awareness, a series of elementary emotional moments. Moreover, the experience of time would be created by these successive moments of self-realization, informed by the body. Generally speaking, our experience of time is related to the temporal integration of emotional and visceral processes linked to the interoceptive system.”[1] This would explain why an extended period of sleep, during which the response to stimuli is strongly diminished, the perception of being and the notion of time are suspended. Both things are intrinsically related, there is no perception of time without being, there is no perception of being without time.

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People are programmed to experience emotional and physiological processes in tandem with others, and this provides a challenge to how one can perceive their own sense of being in isolation. Wittmann also explains that for humans there are precise, relatively brief time intervals that control and demarcate the experience of emotionally complex behaviors—the way we communicate with others through music, dance and conversation.

Liliana Farber's work L-a-s-e-n-i-o-r-a-i-n-d-i-c-a-r-a invites us to enter into an asynchronous dance with all the people who agree to be part of the temporal melody that it proposes. A poetic instant of mutual understanding that crystallizes the disconnection with atomic clocks, and the artificial ways of managing time. Ultimately proposing that among those disrupted, incoherent clocks there are still ways of encountering each other.

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Roxana Fabius

[1] Wittmann, Marc “Embodied Time: The Experience of Time, the Body, and the Self”, Subjective Time: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Temporality, Eds. Arstila, Valtteri and Lloyd, Dan, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London, England, 2014, p. 511.

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