by Fê Carvalho
Dec 18, 2022

“Our world is busy, and we feel we do not have time to pay attention to our surroundings.

Instead, we are passive receptors of overwhelming information, not thinkers. We are often indoctrinated into seeing the world around us through the lens of this constant time and idealized expectations. I use art to create a conversation and instigate questions, to channel the idea of noticing and paying attention to the world around us, and to bring to light issues that are often put aside. This project navigates through a philosophical, poetic exploration of our relationship with Time, which reflects on the lifestyle our societies have been directed to live in.

What if you could have a conversation with Time? What would you say? What would you ask for? The video piece “Letter to Time,” is a surrealist take on a conversation with Time and its response to us. The project was done in collaboration with my fiancee and music composer, Jessica Roman.

After moving from a big city in Brazil to New York City in 2019, I was sucked into a new lifestyle. Do your best; prove that you can do more; ask for more; exceed your capabilities; be an overachiever; the more you do the better you are; don’t be lazy; you gotta hustle. In fact, being an international student in the United States requires you to prove to others that you are capable of things. It requires you to go above and beyond to claim your space. But it turns into a trap when Time becomes an enemy. There is never enough time to complete tasks and we desire more. We never feel we can fully relax and we want more time for it. Then, I understood that this is a phenomenon that can happen to anyone, anywhere, because of our human conditions.

We have been pushed to live a busy life with no time to appreciate the simplicity and small acts of kindness. During the pandemic, I noticed for the first time that a small portion of sunlight was hitting the wall every day. It was very small, and it was there only for 30 minutes. I always looked forward to the light to come. It was refreshing, like renewal, and I was able to appreciate that only after being locked at home, quiet, and without millions of commitments to do, otherwise, I would not see it anytime soon. This is an example of small moments in life that are taken away from us or overlooked because of how our minds are wired to mass production. If you are not moving, you are not producing, therefore you are somewhat useless.

It is important to keep in mind that I speak from an underprivileged position, being born in a low-medium income family, being part of the LGBTQ+ community, being an international student and a person of color. The discrepancies in class, gender, race, and immigration status can affect how one perceives time. The clock might run faster for those who hustle every day to pay their bills, feed their families, and have shelter. On the other hand, the privileged’s clock might run slower when there is nothing else interesting and new happening in their lives.

At the same time we long for more hours, we also want time to run faster. The human ability to concentrate for long is failing generation after generation. Nowadays we have social media and the Web in our pockets bringing fast-paced videos to our eyes and brains. Our way to digest information became quick and plain. This transformation in how we communicate with each other, post things online, absorb information, and find entertainment affects our memory as well. It means that it is harder to compartmentalize information that is either a memory of a conversation with someone, the content of a course in college, or even laborious tasks at work. We become biologically, psychologically - and sometimes even emotionally - fragile as we live in a society of immediatism - that doesn’t just live with limited patience but is pleased with the idea of it.

Now, what if Time could answer you? What if Time could tell you what it thinks about humanity? Through this piece, Time writes a letter back to us analyzing how we have been doing. Both letters are an exploration of how we are never satisfied with the time we have; we take it for granted. Yet, we forget that Time is a construct; it is a measurement unit; a tool to help us visualize existence. What if Time is not even real? Would it change how we see the world? How we desire things? How we collect memories? Would it change how we divide our priorities? Would we not worry about tomorrow? Because there would be no tomorrow. Would we still want “finish ASAP” if “soon” would be relative? This piece might leave us with more questions than answers.

The experience taken from watching this piece is intended to be kept in our minds and to poke us every time we think Time is never enough. Maybe the problem is not Time, but our surroundings and how we have been constantly propagating immediacy. Maybe the problem is how inequalities affect one’s existence and requires them to sacrifice their precious hours on Earth to hustle 24/7. Or the problem may be that we dedicate our lives to intensive labor because of the system we live in. Maybe the problem comes from our mentally-harmed society, which preaches we need to increase our standards so we are worthy. Our problem could be that even if we achieve success, we will never achieve permanent happiness, and we will live in boredom. And maybe our problem is that we think we have control over Time, while in fact, Time is an imaginary concept.

“Letter To Time” seeks to portray this surrealistic conversation with Time while exploring humans’ indecisiveness, eternal dissatisfaction, and desperate need for more or less, while Time may be just an illusion, after all.”