(H)ÊTRE LE TEMPS – BEING TIME collaboration with Kamila Piazza

“Being Time” is built as an audiovisual calendar based on the dendrological code and the temporal sound registers that are characteristic of the trees’ environment and lifecycle. This model is an analysis of the combinations of pairs and intersecting sequences of the annual growth rings of long-lived trees – based on samples extracted from their trunks. Ancient trees do indeed constitute mechanisms for “coding time”.

Each unit is a unique and individual configuration, and it possesses its own identity and particular history, which is inscribed and stored by the tree in its annual rings, which differ in terms of width and structure.

Time is a factor in the construction of space, in which a tree becomes a kind of “time machine”. The objective of this project is, essentially, the study of the nature of our relationship with the environment.

The “Being Time” project presents novel methods for collaboration in the fields of art and science, as well as in interdisciplinary practice. Olga Kisseleva practices her art by taking part in a scientific study, working side-by-side with academic botanists and geneticists.

The intersection of the local realities, contexts, and globalized realities of a homogenized world presents us with a unique opportunity to interact with nature and engage in a kind of “dialogue” with it from different philosophical positions. The philosophical conception of the artist herself is rooted in the principles of participation and co-authorship vis-à-vis nature. Representing a new type of researcher-artist, Olga Kisseleva suggests that we employ an interdisciplinary approach in activities of this kind, since it will enable us to reconstruct the artificially fragmented reality through the convergence of knowledge from various fields, using auxiliary means to acquire transversal habits.