Forming Time: The Temporal Logic of Contemporary Forms of Cultural Production

This interdisciplinary research project sets out from the formalist assumption that aesthetic form fundamentally shapes knowledge and processes of world-making, including our concepts of time. In a series of sub-projects it aims to investigate both widely common and alternative temporal structures of contemporary forms of cultural production like computer games, complex TV, graphic novels and popular forms of contemporary lyric (Spoken Word Poetry, Instapoetry, song lyrics, etc.). On the one hand, the purpose of this interrogation of the temporal assumptions that shape and are shaped through the engagement with such cultural forms is to open current concepts of time up to constructive criticism. On the other hand, explorations of deviant forms of temporal shaping may point to potentially productive alternative temporal concepts, opening up new possibilities for thought and world-making. This is relevant in particular in view of the realisation that the climate crisis is also a crisis of the dominant Western understanding of time. The aim of the project then is, ultimately, to critically interrogate the time concepts that are trained and perpetuated by widely popular cultural products and to suggest possible alternatives which might help us imagine a more sustainable present and future.