Time is all-pervasive, but it becomes especially salient when our usual daily rhythm is interrupted by historical events, some major rupture, a natural disaster, or other catastrophes. Our routines are then broken and the “normal flow of time” bursts out of its regular course. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 and the subsequent events and developments have brought to our attention the ambiguity, fragility, and dynamism underlying our sense of time. The sudden halting we have imposed upon ourselves has exposed our latent feeling that time is accelerating for us. This perception has developed at least since the 1990s following global developments in technology and media. We have become more sensitive to our subjective notion of time that confounds mechanical time with its quantitive division into seconds, minutes, and hours. This perception oscillates between the extremities of rapidity and lethargy and is either stuck in the past or hurrying ahead towards the future.

A Long Time Short presents works by Trisha Baga, Hicham Berrada, David Claerbout, David Horvitz, Lukas Marxt, Bahar Noorizadeh, Su Yu Hsin, and Agustina Woodgate. The exhibition calls into question the technological, social, and economic conditions that influence our perception and judgements of time. It explores how these relate to the frequently proclaimed feelings of acceleration and exhaustion, but also of stasis.