Cristina David “Time Travel Diary”
Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Dump Time / Artists
Cristina David (RO): “Time Travel Diary”, 2010/2011
Time Travel Diary
Installation, foils and light boxes, 2010/2011,
Supported by: Foundation Manifesta 8 Región de Murcia
Since the earth in its orbit surrounds the sun exactly five hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds later than our calendar suggests, the time man lives in is an inaccurate time. For three years, this time is, in fact, ahead of the cosmic time, and it is balanced out in the following year by an additional day. This inaccuracy in the computation of time and the thought that she, for three years, practically lives in the future was the starting point of Cristina David’s self-experiment: for six weeks, during her stay in Murcia, Spain, at the Manifesta 8, she lived according to a “personalised” time taking into account the shift of the cosmic and the social time from January 1st 2009 (when the times concurred with the leap year 2008) until the beginning of her experiment on October 9th 2010 and reckoning it up to universal time (UTC).
In a diary David writes down how she experienced this “time journey” differing from normal in ten hours and 17 minutes. Besides anecdotes and surreal coincidences she describes the difficulties she bodilyexperienced in adjusting from day- to nighttime, continuous difficulties in concentrating, panic attacks and an experience of foreignness and a feeling of isolation. David, by this experiment, not only draws our attention to how construed our calendar is, she also shows how a falling out of conventional time implies falling out of a social framework: “It is not the missing of the light and all the biological effects that is the most difficult to endure […] but the social aspect of this experiment: it feels it’s THEM – The OTHERS versus ME.” (Cristina David).
For a full length reading of the whole diary go to www.cristinadavid.ro.