We need different times, but do we have the methods to unfold them?

Human life and organization need to be fundamentally transformed to support more inclusive and sustainable worlds. This requires attention to a key foundation of shared life and agency: time and temporality. While rational, instrumental, and typically short-term agency is a taken-for-granted structure in late modern society, this has impeded an understanding of the complexity of ecosystems, of social change and of the inter-relations between individuals, people and their worlds. Changing temporal habits and orientations requires experimentation, reflection, collaboration, and methods for researching the complexity of time with and across collectives.

Research on time and temporality abounds across a range of disciplines and sites. Alongside this thematic interest, is an interest in how we go about this research, with adaptations of traditional methods such as time use studies, mapping exercises and new approaches such as artistic research.

The particular focus for this event is to bring together those interested in working with time in groups and communities, and explore processes and methods to collectively understand the pressures and possibilities of time. We invite you to join the Timely Methods for Novel Times! workshop that will explore approaches to discussing, communicating and questioning time with others and ask the question ‘we need different times, but do we have the methods to unfold them?’

We invite you to join us to ask more questions and offer provocations. These could be along the lines of:

How can we provide opportunities for groups, communities and individuals to reflect on their experiences of time, and the experiences of those around them?
In a context of the climate crisis, what ways do we have to engage with human and non-human times?
How do we initiate conversations that go beyond clock-time and worries of speed-up to talk about the complexities of everyday time?
How can we create thicker relations with what is around us and go into deep nows?
How do we engage in and with the complex networks of life in a world whose institutions work on the basis of linearity and efficiency?
How do we bring these times into practice?
How do we mediate across and with different pasts, presents and futures?
This workshop will provide an opportunity for attendees to share their approaches, raise thorny problems, learn about cutting edge techniques, and connect with others interested in researching and/or practicing alternative orientations to time. All approaches to these questions are welcome!