Public Information
with:
Lina Viste Grønli, Patrick Howlett, Julia Benjamin, David Horvitz, Adam Marnie
January 26 - February 28, 2017
Carl Louie 260 Clarence Street
London, Canada
London, Canada
Jan 21, 2017 at 12:29 AM
Dear S.,
I am having the best experience of time right now.
Last night I left the gym right before midnight. I was walking home. I chose
the dark street. Then some guy from behind me ran up to me, pointed a gun at me,
and took my phone!
So now I have no phone. And I don't know what time it is!
And I also got lost twice today.
So now I don't know where I am or when I am!
One of my favorite ladies in the history of time keeping is Ruth Belville. She
synchronized her pocket watch to the official time at the Greenwich Observatory
(GMT). This was after time had been standardized, but before there was an
effective technology to distribute this new official time. Ruth would take her
synchronized pocket watch and take it to London and walk it through the city
selling the official time to watch makers. What I love about this is that this was the
official time, the time of the railroad, the time of international conferences, of
standardization. It was something that seems synonymous with industry and is
beyond the scale of the single individual. But the speed that this time traveled
was the speed of the feet of a little old lady walking through the streets of
London.
It was as if she was carrying something so huge (the size of the whole world) in
her pocket. But this grandness succumbed to her. To her body, her breath, her
heart.
(In the coming years she would become obsolete by the telegraph.)
And here today, everyone is carrying time in their pockets.
But yet it seems as if time is actually carrying us in its pockets, dragging us
around.
The talk in Gatwick was great. Nobody showed up for it.
Maybe I'll get a phone tomorrow.
-D