Time-flux — Zhao Jiajing

Time-flux began with a tension I feel between experiencing time and having to live by the clock. I organise my life around measured time, but my own sense of it does not always fit. The same length of time can feel stretched or compressed, crowded or empty. I find it difficult to reconcile this changing experience with the fixed measures I am expected to follow.

Bergson’s idea of durée, or duration, led me to imagine a “time field” filling the space around us. This is a form I give to my experience of time: something that can be stretched and shaped by what we live through and how we feel. Through this work, I try to make that imagined field perceptible and better understand my own relationship with time.

The field takes shape through four layers of transparent screens and four-channel sound. Particles gather and disperse in response to sound, forming shifting shapes across the layered images. I wanted to give these difficult-to-describe sensations of time a sense of volume, depth and movement, as though an inner experience could extend into the space around the body.

For me, Time-flux holds a wish to make room for feelings that do not fit the clock. Through this changing field, I want to stay with the friction between personal experience and measured time, and explore what it feels like to live between the two.