Welcome to the Alarm Clock Academy,

Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?

This project called “Alarm Clock Academy: A Minus Plato Questionnaire about Time and Awakening” was a collaboration between Minus Plato and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio about the experience of visiting William Kentridge’s installation “The Refusal of Time” which was on display between February 3 and April 15, 2018.

(You can still visit the webpage of the exhibition here on the Wexner’s fancy new website and you can read more about the original version of this project below)

Anyway, even though the exhibition has passed and Kentridge’s work is somewhere else in the world right now, we wanted to stay focused on the key ideas at the heart of the project – how an artwork moves through time and space, and becomes a point of connection between visitors, wherever and whenever they encounter it.

Did you know that the ancient Greek philosopher Plato invented the first alarm clock in human history? Well, he did. And do you know why? Because he wanted to ensure his students in the Academy were awake in time to attend his riveting lectures!

Anyway, so as not to take up any more of your precious time, let us move on to the questions. Click the link below to fill out the questionnaire below:

Richard (for Minus Plato)

Online Visitors

 

Original Alarm Clock Academy Project (January – May 2018)

To coincide with the exhibition William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time that was on display at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio between February 3, 2018 and April15, 2018, Minus Plato collaborated with the Wexner Center for the Arts on a questionnaire to explore how Kentridge’s profound philosophical, scientific and historical ideas about time impact the everyday lives of three connected communities (the Wexner Center staff, visitors to the Wexner exhibition and online users of the Wexner Center’s social media).

Alarm Clock Academy is inspired by Kentridge’s immersive investigation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and its historical contexts. Taking Kentridge’s exhibition as itself an object that navigates time and space, traveling around the globe since its original creation for dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in 2012, we want to see how an artwork can be used as an extension of Einstein’s theory about the constructed nature of time.

In addition, we wanted to expand on the little known fact that the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, invented the first alarm clock, specifically for use by his students at the Academy to ensure they arrived on time to his lectures. In thinking about Plato’s alarm clock and his students, we aimed to initiate a discussion about time-management in our everyday lives.

Bringing together the mundane question of the alarm clock in our daily routines and the more expansive question of Kentridge’s installation’s movement through time and space, we want to invite these three connected communities to ponder what it would mean for them to use their time differently and to consider The Refusal of Time as an equivalent of a time-machine for them to return to the past (whether 2012 or last year) to intervene in the present as a process of more active awakening.

We hope you enjoy exploring the ‘Adventures of The Refusal of Time‘ on the map below and please join in the fun by taking the version of the questionnaire below that pertains to you.

Bon voyage,

Minus Plato

Questionnaire Links:

Wexner Staff Member

 

Online Visitors

Wexner Center Visitors