My durational work began in 1993 when I photographed the rumpled bed I had just risen from. Since then, I have kept a daily record; there are now over 10,000 photographs. Visually and conceptually like geological formations, the beds speak to non-events and the “unremitting middle” (Michael Marder). Durational work seeks to redress time-blindness. Time-blindness leads us to act “like bad tourists on earth, enjoying its amenities and ransacking its bounty” (Marcia Bjornerud). My durational work links daily being to the long arc of time, encouraging planetary and geological perspectives. Can making durational work about human temporality In a longer terms enrich my experience of being alive by establishing a sense of kinship with other denizens of this planet?
A commitment to duration is an engagement with the ecological crisis – a deep crisis for many species that face extinction, but also a crisis of temporal sensibility. Engaging durational temporalities expands our sensibilities, bears witness to loss, animates death, and considers the ghostly hauntings of the damages of modernity.
