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Food for the Imagination
Interview by William McClure, Sydney, November 2001
WM Would you say that you are obsessed by "time"? DW Yes, I am. And it is, I suspect, characteristic of everyone's obsession
that it seems to them wholly reasonable to be so obsessed. It is, famously,
possible not to think much about time at all. Or, if one does, to be neurotically
obsessed, for example, with being 'on time', or with the efficient use of
time etc. I am not obsessed in that way at all. There are those who are morbidly
concerned with their own mortality. Not me. My 'obsession' is best described
as a reflective fascination with the way time is woven into everything we
do and care about. Sometimes this has to do with the way things take time
to develop, how things unfurl in time - such a relationship, or the way a
child grows up. But time also operates as a constant dimension of virtual
existence. The significance of our lives is tied to the ways in which we brood
on, or build on the past, and the way we imagine, fear, or plan for the future.
And the ways in which, as we say, we 'live for the present'. To be, like me
- obsessively curious about time, and fascinated with time - is to constantly
notice the strange shapes of time, its twists and turns, and the poignancy
of memory and hope. It is not typically a cause of troubled anxiety, but of
repeated delight. You could compare me to a musician who hears sounds everywhere
- in the street, in the insects in the trees, creaks in the floorboards -
and who enjoys acknowledging and noticing these little sound creatures. And
just as it is not hard for a musician to alert his friends to this world of
sound, so too the chronophile quickly has people catching on. Captivation
with time is infectious. WM What it is about time that you find fascinating? WM In what way is the time capsule a performance of these modalities? Or
does a capsule merely enter into these modalities? Or does time enter in (break
in) to the capsule? Or is it all of the above? DW Let me give you a sense of the 'layers' involved in this time-capsule
event. 1. My coming to Australia (I): When I was a young boy of about 8 in Sheffield,
I spent an afternoon after school with my friend Tim digging a U-shaped tunnel
that went down into the earth and then came up again. It was large enough
for skinny boys like us to crawl through, and we did. Tim's Mum called us
in for tea, and when we didn't come, she came out to see what we were doing.
That was deep enough, she said. Any deeper and you will break through to Australia.
Australia was ever after a magical place associated with digging holes.
An interview with
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Professor of Philosophy
DW I think the word 'captivation' captures something half way between obsession
and fascination.
WM What for you is the relation between the art/performance event and the
modalities of time?
DW This is a great question. Perhaps I could start by saying that my understanding
of this very Relation has been growing ever since the idea for the Art Event
took shape. The idea began as a kernel, and has been adding layers ever since.
Why did this happen? I think it is precisely the bubbling, fermenting power
of a good idea that makes one take it seriously in the first place. It says
to you - this thing will run and run. You glimpse without being able to wholly
articulate at the outset, that it occupies many different dimensions, that
it is hooked in to many lines of significance, many possible developments.
So when we actually performed this Art Event, it has already accreted multiple
layers of meaning. Imagine a snowball that begins at the top of a mountain.
By the time it gets down below the snow line to the gravel scree, and the
meadows, and the woods, it has sufficient weight and speed to keep going,
picking up more and more different layers as it goes. So the Art Event was
an initial idea, which developed for months before we dug the hole. In the
course of that time, I realised, for example, that when I left England, I
had organised a similar time-capsule burial event. And that I had forgotten
about it! Which gave this Australian Event a very peculiar status. It was
not the first. But by being the second, it inaugurated these events as a series,
making the forgotten 'first' event into the first of a series. Which all goes
to show that two is the first number, as Aristotle said long ago. (And I'm
saying it again.) The Art Event was, as you know, the excuse for a beach picnic,
a wonderful tradition, in which young children discover the ways different
foods mix with sand, and what the results taste like. And grown-ups try to
keep their food separate. But the actual burial of the capsule was enacted
as a ritual, with each object being described, handled and photographed before
being given its seat for the long journey ahead. We collectively dug a deep
hole, placed a ticking electric clock in the capsule, sealed it, and as heavy
rain started up, we covered it over, and tidied up the site.
2. My coming to Australia (II): I was aware that the first settlers had treated
the continent as 'terra nullius', which gave them the right to do anything
to it, and to disregard the rights of aboriginal people. I wanted, somehow,
to mark a different relation to the land. This burial event has left no visible
trace. And yet the capsule contains numerous things that could be thought
of as gifts from another civilization. Gifts to the past and to the future.
3. These 'things' were solicited by mail from friends all over the world.
They are something of a record of the web of connections that this mortal
has at this moment in time with other mortals on the planet. The accompanying
text (buried in the capsule) tries to make some of these associations and
connections explicit. These include reference to some things that were lost
in the mail, impounded by customs (because the label had said Environmental
Art Event, it set off 'ecological contamination' alarm bells in some inspector's
mind). [That ecological concern I share, of course. The fauna and flora of
Australia have been dramatically transformed by the introduction of foreign
species. Giving a real meaning to the expression 'natural history'.]
4. This time capsule quite seriously meant to last hidden long into the future.
It could be discovered hundreds or thousands of years down the road, with
its contents intact, or never at all. We can only imagine what kinds of creatures
those humans (or other aliens?) might be, and what they would make of the
items in this capsule, many of which will be by that time, the sole examples
of their kind. And for now, for us, the time-capsule is food for the imagination,
allowing us to step outside of our space, our time, to imagine other ways,
other worlds. But then to step back again, to inhabit this world, here and
now, anew. Imagining the future transforms the present. That's the work (and
play) of a time-capsule.