“For now time is the duration of a thought”
Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

Time fas­ci­nates because of its per­va­sive­ness: there is no way to think around it. As with any­thing so ubiquitous, an assump­tion of time as nat­ur­al and non-nego­tiable is quick­ly made, but con­cepts of time are con­struc­tions, and those con­struc­tions depend strong­ly on social and tech­no­log­i­cal real­i­ties. At first sight, time’s nature is lin­ear. In the Kantian tra­di­tion, future becomes present becomes past, and there is no way back. But oth­er con­cepts are pos­si­ble. Time can also be simul­ta­ne­ous, mul­ti­di­men­sion­al, or reversible. Time is a non-lin­ear way to order events in rela­tion to each oth­er, and since sound is a time-based phe­nom­e­non, those pos­si­bil­i­ties are fun­da­men­tal con­di­tions for mak­ing music.

Sound and music offer a space where those aspects of this oth­er­wise elusive mat­ter can be made tan­gi­ble, where we can exper­i­ment with its many facets and pos­si­ble approach­es. Sound and music can unhinge the author­i­ty of clock time, by for exam­ple tak­ing us into a shared syn­chrony in which the social takes over, or on the con­trary offer­ing a space where an indi­vid­ual can dis­con­nect and time trav­el into mem­o­ry or unknown futures. Music cre­ates a spe­cial momen­tary bond between musi­cians and pub­lic when lis­ten­ers enter into some­body else’s time with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly know­ing its dimen­sion beforehand.

The four days of Oscillation 2023 will pro­pose dif­fer­ent set­tings to explore these con­sid­er­a­tions. Day by day will zoom in on aspects such as dis­place­ment in time by mem­o­ry or antic­i­pa­tion; time-struc­tur­ing instru­ments like rhythm, ges­ture, pulse, rep­e­ti­tion or silence; dura­tional simul­tane­ity in which the audi­ence can nav­i­gate; and the sub­jec­tive tem­po­ral expe­ri­ence of impro­vi­sa­tion which strong­ly draws on relationality.

Oscillation ::: o tem­po is host­ed at MILL (Needcompany) and HISK, Brussels