Book-Keeping for the Time Poor: exchange rates for creative intimacy in an attention deficit economy

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Paper cut money art and an interactive book project made by Lady Kitt, inspired by the Constellations 2020-21 collaboration with Adam Moore, Hussina Raja, Niki Colclough, Mark Bleakley, Sophie Seita, Tom Pope, Winnie Herbstein and Youngsook Choi.

 

Flat Time House (FTHo) was the studio home of John Latham (1921-2006), recognised as one of the most significant and influential British post-war artists. In 2003, Latham declared the house a living sculpture, naming it FTHo after his theory of time, ‘Flat Time’. The context of FTHo and the work of John Latham, Barbara Steveni and the Artist Placement Group have informed this work.

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In a system feverishly fuelled by a lack of time, where do promiscuous care and generous introspection flourish? How can we value the giving and receiving of deep attentions? For the Constellations group, collaborating for over a year, mostly online, this has happened in liminal spaces- digitally, via post, late at night and early morning, in “sleepover time”- incidental time (for incidental people?).

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Inviting ourselves into promiscuous kinship is an awkward, joyful, dis kilter-ing endeavour. Here we’ve scrummaged around in rich and uncomfortable ground. We’ve considered:

The barriers we face when reaching out to others (obstacles saturated in time poverty)

The currency of an attention deficit economy as a gross bombardment of omissions, maiming and distorting perceptions and understandings of time

 

 

Haste excludes.

 

 

For me, Umbra Penumbra Antumbra event and my "Book-keeping For The Time Poor" works are invitations to navigate and negotiate the exchange rates of creative intimacy. Time is a material. Social distance can be an invitation as well as an obstacle. Collective care offers tools for re-crafting both distance and time. Growing them into shapes which value and embrace elongated models of thinking, doing and being.

 

Here is slow, dense, luscious attention sharing.

 

 

Below is a brief text which accompanied the work at the Umbra Penumbra Antumbra event

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"I am disabled and chronically ill, at times this means I am unable to attend events in person. This is one of those times. People who are not where you are, can be dead easy to ignore.

 

But we don’t have to be.

 

The pages of “Book-Keeping for the Time Poor” can create liminal space for creative intimacy with people who can’t be right there, right now- social art with social distance.

 

Maybe:

Tear out a postage stamped page, write, draw or make something and send it to someone, somewhere else

Leave a page intact, create something for others to experience at another time

Do something else you feel moved to do, which creates time/ space for slow, dense, luscious attention sharing beyond the borders of this event"

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