The TimeZone

The Time Zone Research Lab is a community-arts-based investigation into the nature of time and temporality.

We have two main research questions:

1.
How can we be more intimate with Time?

2.
Is Time imprisoned and if so how can we help to liberate it?

The Time Zone Research Lab is a community-arts-based investigation into the nature of time and temporality.

We have two main research questions:

1.
How can we be more intimate with Time?

2.
Is Time imprisoned and if so how can we help to liberate it?

What did we learn and how did we learn it

The Time Zone Research Lab was a 100-week online drop-in hub with a transdisciplinary approach where we studied a range of texts from physics to philosophy to poetry to religion to anthropology to archeology to science fiction and more. Rather than thinking of this approach as eclectic I imagined that the ubiquity of time requires an interdisciplinary approach. This approach is NOT intended as a teachable methodology, it was designed uniquely for this Lab.

The reading was done in a signature style which I call “interrupted reading”, where the interleaving of voices and the feeling forward into meaning making was more important than individual voices of either writer or any single participant. Along with interrupted reading we employed over a dozen other reading, dialogic, community building and archival practices. Below are a few examples.

Mending the Web: 2 hour open drop in time before the reading session would begin. A time to connect, to support each other, and to mull over previous sessions.

Recapping: Whenever anyone would drop in we would greet them with “you’re right on time, and then recap the reading and conversation for them. The recapping expectedly became an essential pedagogical mechanism, helping us to consolidate memories and check for understanding.

The Voice of Time: (designed by Venu Dodavarappu) was a collaborative poem written by listening to the “voice” of time and recording it in the chat. Every reading session would open with the voice of time from the week before.

Puppet Parties: (designed by Ley McDonell) were held at the end of each 12 week session. Puppets were made of the authors, ideas, and themes that we had encountered, and then we would improvise puppet plays. There was a high level of nonsense and whimsy, and it was quite astonishing how well they worked as capstones before moving into another season.

The Time Zone continues as a lyrical educational architecture that attempts to learn without grasping. We practice de-possessing knowledge, we do not try to win it or overcome it or master it, but to be multiple and resonant with the learning by relating with it.

The Time Zone will awaken in 2026, after a five year resting phase. The phase 1 archive is fresh and bubbling, openly accessible to all. Please read the FAQs below, and use the sign up form to join us.

Interviews

Time Zone Lab: A Radical De-schooling Experiment

The Time Zone in One Minute

(De-/Re-)Constructing Worlds with Muindi Fanuel Muindi and Nadia Chaney

Interview with MUSE Arts on Why the Arts in Pedagogy

FAQs

It’s a community research lab that uses art-based practices to investigate the nature of Time and Temporality.

The purpose of the Time Zone Research Lab is: 1. To become more intimate with Time as a being in its own right, to understand its entrapment in late capitalism. To imagine and practice the liberation of Time. To find and enjoy new ways of relating to Time. 2. To study together and generate knowledge in an environment of creativity and kindness that brings us all abundance and a sense of hope.

To write a legal brief and a Charter of the Rights of Time to liberate time from its imprisonment.

There was, it was called Archive Fever and later was called Kairos and Omen. Technically this is its continuation, but over the last five years it evolved. The purpose Archive Fever was to retrace our steps, deepen our understandings, pick up loose threads and have more good times together. The Archive is always under construction, and all are welcome to contribute to it.

It’s named after Session 60 which was named after a lecture given by Jacques Derrida at the Freud Archives in London in 1994. Derrida thinks of an archive as having three components, the space, the guide and the code. We learned in Phase One that Time (and/or maybe the Time Zone Lab) is alive and responsive. In Phase Two we will encounter its archive as a trifold entity, and become intimate with its space, guide and codes.

Absolutely. Sign up below.

For Phase One we paid $0.23 CAD per session to be paid in a lump sum for 100 online sessions, a total of $23 CAD.

WHAT?? THAT SEEMS VERY LOW
Yes. Well, If you find you were receiving more value than you paid, then you either a) sent the difference in cash to the Time Zone Research Lab or b) PAID FORWARD the difference in your community..

For example, if you paid $0.23 for a session, but you received $10 in value you must find a way to make a $9.77 contribution to your “home” community. That can be anything you want (you could volunteer somewhere, help someone in need, share a poem with a friend, make someone dinner, chat with a stranger, knit someone a scarf, really ANYTHING that you feel has that value). You DO NOT tell us what you did. Or, you send the difference in cash to the Lab. All money received will be deposited in THE OCTOPUS and not seen or counted until the end of Phase Two. At the end we will smash the octopus (!) and the experiment will be over. (Nadia will keep that money in return for hosting the Lab and paying for its various costs.)

WHAT’S THIS ABOUT? I’VE NEVER DONE ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE
Imagine that inside the dark womb of the octopus is the vibrating soup of possibility in which we are co-creating! Really though. Or, imagine that by destabilizing the HOW MUCH something is worth, and focussing on aligning with the FLOW or MOVEMENT of its worth we might create a different kind of exchange. One that is alive and abundant.

FINE, BUT HOW DO I PAY?
Paypal, etransfer, personal cheque, credit card or cash. You’ll find the details at the bottom of each email.If necessary Western Union is also an option, but not preferred.

WHAT ABOUT PHASE TWO?
Phase Two is purely by donation; you can send money or see below for another option

If you cannot or do not want to pay you can exchange in kind by interviewing a “time professional” in your community about the nature of time. You can submit a 500-1000 word report or an audio recording of the interview. You can do this as often as you like.

In Phase One we limited it to drummers, but now anyone who works closely with time can be included. Here are some ideas: watchmaker, referee, composer, dancer, ADHD specialist, regression therapy hypnotist, hospice nurse, air traffic controller, morning radio DJ… see? Anyone who works with time. The interview must be about what they know about the nature of time. You can hear the collection of drummer interviews in the archive.

Yes, kind of. Given the petition started by my mother to save Epok the Octopus, he was very carefully opened and the money was removed and spent on time zone projects. He still lives on. The Octopus was a commission for the Time Zone Research Lab by the incredible ceramicist and sculptor Wai Yant Li.