This paper will go over some of the main inspirations behind the Media Arts as Time Machines event (Goldsmiths, 2023), looking at different conceptions and functions of time machines across a range of media arts.
While Dark might seem to offer the most literal example of a time machine, this turns out to be strange and impossible device, itself dependent on time travel in its manufacture out of elements from different time periods and therefore calling into question questions of linear temporal causality in favour of strange loops that have more in common with quantum notions of spatiotemporal entanglements than with travel to stable and well defined historical periods, even if the series seems to start there. Coil’s Time Machines project makes use of a different kind of loop, of analogue sonic repetitive drones, to generate a disturbed temporal experience for the listener that ‘under the right conditions’ (social, cognitive, chemical) may constitute a form of quantum time travel. And the Black Quantum Futurism collective deliberately combine elements from Afrofuturism and Quantum physics to undo the oppressions of linear chronological time via a range of media art practices, exhibitions and workshops, including workshops in time travel. All of the above can be considered as machines for escaping linear chronological time, even if these escapes may have their own dangers and limitations depending on the context. Finally the paper will do an analysis of the post hardcore band La Dispute’s ‘King Park’, an emotionally intense song revolving around the accidental shooting of a child and the consequences of this for the killer. More than just objective reportage or story-telling, I will argue that the song both lyrically and sonically inhabits the events it describes and enacts a mode of time travel to revisit these traumatic events and to re-experience them from multiple perspectives which is indeed a commonly used strategy in the band’s work. As such, ‘King Park’ is not just a song about returning to past events but a machine that enacts this return inside the events, that renders them sonic, visceral and expressive, rather than just being mere news headlines. As such , I will argue that this, alongside the other examples mentioned resonate strongly with Deleuzian conceptions not only of chronological time as a chronic condition that artistic practices draw various lines of flight from, but also of the event as an acausal and non-linear intensity, always capable of being re-actualised in the present. I will finish by discussing some of the other contributions to the event and subsequent publication, and my plans for elaborating further this research focus while at UBC.
References
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image
David Keenan, England’s Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground
Rasheedah Philips, Black Quantum Futurism: Theory and Practice
This event is co-sponsored by the UBC Centre for Cinema Studies.
Bio
Dr. Michael N. Goddard is Reader in Film and Screen Media at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has published widely on international cinema and audiovisual culture as well as cultural and media theory. He is also a media theorist, especially in the fields of media ecologies and media archaeology, as well as in digital media. In media archaeology, his most significant contribution is the monograph, Guerrilla Networks (2018), the culmination of his media archaeological research to date, which was published by Amsterdam University Press. His previous book, Impossible Cartographies (2013) was on the cinema of Raúl Ruiz. He has also been doing research on the fringes of popular music focusing on groups such as The Fall, Throbbing Gristle and Laibach and culminating in editing two books on noise, Reverberations (2012) and Resonances (2013). He is currently working on a book on the British post-industrial group Coil, and a new research project on genealogies of immersive media and virtuality.
