500 HOURS

by Jennifer Walshe

In a text written especially for the Berliner Festspiele, Jennifer Walshe tries to capture the essence of “TIME TIME TIME”, which reveals the world of dinosaurs and climate change as well as the beginning of industrialisation with its optimised production processes. In addition, Jennifer Walshe reports in a short interview with Patricia Hofmann on the development process and further background information on “TIME TIME TIME”.

Available from 18 March 2019

English

To the event “TIME TIME TIME”

I would say I spent maybe 500 hours there over the course of a year

500 hours might seem like a lot, but it’s only 1/20th of the 10,000 hours I’m going to need to put in just looking

I would go on a Thursday or Friday morning, preferably a rainy day

Though my favourite mornings were the ones they opened early to let the autistic kids in

And I would sit, and I would look at her

I’d try to begin by mapping my feet to her feet, my knees to her knees, my hips to her hips

I’d think about the fact that these were bones that bore a lot of weight

Try to think about the heaviest backpack I’d ever worn, things like that

I would say for the first 20 to 30 minutes, you’re just trying to look past the glass, trying to understand that they’re bones, they’re bones the same as the bones inside your body

500 HOURS

I would say I spent maybe 500 hours there over the course of a year

500 hours might seem like a lot, but it’s only 1/20th of the 10,000 hours I’m going to need to put in just looking

I would go on a Thursday or Friday morning, preferably a rainy day

Though my favourite mornings were the ones they opened early to let the autistic kids in

And I would sit, and I would look at her

I’d try to begin by mapping my feet to her feet, my knees to her knees, my hips to her hips

I’d think about the fact that these were bones that bore a lot of weight

Try to think about the heaviest backpack I’d ever worn, things like that

I would say for the first 20 to 30 minutes, you’re just trying to look past the glass, trying to understand that they’re bones, they’re bones the same as the bones inside your body

Trying to sink down past your flesh to feel your bones, to just be aware of them

And once I’d got through the flesh, and I’d got down into my bones, at least

And I’d got through the glass, and started to see her bones as bones, all the colours in the gallery would start to dissolve and change

They would shift into pinks and pale blues; fuschia and purple tropical plants would push up through the ground

Mint and pale custard yellow clouds would smear across my vision

And I’d sit there, in a sort of psychedelic Triassic haze

Looking at the dinosaur, moving my jaws and my hands ever so slightly

Trying to imagine being her