This four-part seminar, Time Matters, inquires into how time – in artistic practice and theory – is an ever-changing, multi-layered concept encompassing multiple orders of magnitude: from the cosmic macrotime of the universe and the geological deep time of the Earth to the nanotime of the processors in our computers. In this first seminar, we engage with time as a social and technological construct and actant within a european-historical and contemporary human timeframe. Seminar I – Casting Futures in the Thick Present – inquires into three perspectives: the unsettling implications of a simultaneous global time, time as a ‘technological object’ arising within the european context, and time as ‘a malleable category to reinvent ourselves’ within an artistic exploration of current migratory experiences. It is time to start casting futures through thinking with and storying with with all kinds of (non-)human kin.

Peter Sonderen, Professor, and Sharon Stewart, researcher for the Professorship Theory in the Arts, have invited theorist Eric Kluitenberg, Editor in Chief of the Tactical Media Files, and sound artist researcher Ximena Alarcón-Díaz, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow 2017-2019 (INTIMAL), to give talks in the morning and afternoon. Each talk will be followed with time for group discussion.

This Seminar includes contemplative intermezzos, lunch, and a participatory writing session and will be followed immediately by the book presentation of The Entanglement of Theory and Practices in the Arts, edited by Peter Sonderen (2019, ArtEZ Press).