What Time Travel feels like, sometimes

This work is part of a larger project entitled “What Time Travel feels like, sometimes” that includes painting, sculpture, video, performance and installation.  These paintings are my personal narratives about time travel. As a life-long lover of science fiction, practicing witch, and avid reader of edge science and psychology, concepts like time travel, morphic resonance, and cell memory are  part of my lexicon. 

 

Many concepts in science fiction have later been proven to be true, much as modern quantum physics has validated aspects of ancient magic, like particles being in two places at once, or moving faster than light. ”Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” wrote Arthur C Clark. His book “Childhood’s End” describes a shock so grave-one that precedes the end of humankind, that it travels backwards in time through human consciousness. Samuel Delany, in “Dhalgren”, tells a story of a city and inhabitants that exist just outside of “normal” space/time. The incident that shifted reality is never revealed, just accepted. In “The Lathe of Heaven” Ursula Le Guin writes of a man who’s dreams alter waking “reality”. William Gibson coined the word “cyberspace” in his book “Neuromancer”, which pre-dated the web by about 10 years. His book “The Peripheral” tells of  a future where one can project their consciousness into a mechanical body for, say, a meeting in another part of the world, or another time.

 

When I think about time travel, I’m thinking not only about Star Trek-like incorporation/discorporation, but also human consciousness and time. Nostalgia, for instance is a word from early medical psychology (like hysteria). It means a longing for a home that never was. Our culture right now is steeped in nostalgia, with people longing for a time and a way of life that never was. It’s a form of time shift. When you are day-dreaming of another time, are you in the room? Altered states. Where are you?  When someone is in the middle of a PTSD incident, try telling them it’s not real. Mnemonics-memory triggers, how fast do they take you back? Light speed? Faster? 

 

My work has alway been narrative. Humans are storytellers. It is what binds us together, across time.