Zeitverschwendung

It’s just as we always suspected: Time isn’t money at all. Time is time. No one has it. And so let’s waste it together. Because, as is well known, therein lies one of art’s most important duties. In the competitive struggle for the scarce resources of time and attention, artistic works that subvert or exceed their usual time-frames create potential for resistance.

This year, Foreign Affairs will present various artistic productions that use alternative time formats, following quite diverse logics of production and performance. They challenge our sense of time, give space to our perception and invite us to linger and circulate, to leave and return. They create room for a new way of experiencing and shaping time, opening up possibilities for a different social time regime. At a symposium on the eve of the world premiere of “Mount Olympus”, Jan Fabre’s 24-hour performance, we would therefore like to examine notions and systems of time and its significance for artistic, social and economic processes.