The word “time” denotes something not easily described without involving space. This is because it is entangled and inseparable from what it affects, whether through erosion or creation. Space-time is changing. Its progression is categorised by humans in a chronology of past, present and future and is often measured in minutes, hours and days. The occupation of dividing time is a constant concern in the human world. Religions are an example of the diversity of its organisation. The Jeaudaic calendar is in the year 5782, the Islamic calendar is in the year 1443, and the Gregorian calendar 2022. We have acknowledged the difference between time felt and time as it is divided in units: time is malleable by human consciousness. Although life is lived in the same world, it is perceived and thus experienced in many different  ways.


Time as an all-encompassing and singular force is entirely plausible. Within scientific spacetime however, the concept of singularity is actually more anomalous and unknown. Singular spacetime is when an entity disappears from existence; it escapes time. A black hole occurs. Since industrialization, time has been aligned to correlate with capital accumulation. Time becomes a tool to control and enforce a production-driven pace. The heavy prioritisation of profit over human autonomy and available planetary resources has created a double shortage of time: a rapid decay of our environment - as we count the years before ecological collapse - and a global precarity of basic human care and freedom. The scenario of humans disappearing in an apocalyptic disaster echoes the black hole visualisation. A black hole, or shocking negative utopia, deny indeterminacy. Instead of human extinction being a phase in time, it is imagined as a kind of darkness, rather than a continuation. Here, the overwhelming anthropocentric mode of perception becomes evident. In fact, if we disappear, the earth will not. We propose that by refraining from being the guiders of time, we open other ways of imagining time and perhaps reposition human existence within a more cosmic framework. We must aim for a time which is lived together, with non-humans and non-life, on a deeper level. Freeing time of the constructs of capitalism means allowing real inter-human and interspecies synchronizations to happen, instead of dictating and following the fabrication of human individualism. A shift from anthropocentric understanding of time to richer imaginaries of plural ‘life-times’ can open up related and woven ways in which life can be lived. Donna Haraway, Arne Naess, Ana Tsing and so many others have raised a need for us as a species to reinvent our interactions, relationships, kinships to our vital surroundings and perhaps the first step in this journey is the reappropriation of human time¹²³.


This manifesto suggests Contemplations as a way to dismantle and re-imagine notions  of space and time. They move away from more conventional demands, values or statements; except for the fact that the contemplations demand time themselves. We pause to contemplate without rush and to think deeply about what we can learn by imagining times beyond our own. Thinking for longer rejects the capitalist entanglement of time and profit, weaving together nature and culture again, and creating spectrums in places of divide. All lifetimes are established as kin. Imagination through contemplation is not a way to flee human subjectivity, as this is impossible, but instead to inspire reorientation.













            A Contemplation of Disentanglement

Time and capitalism disentangle.

Not work to live nor live to work. Through this open thought, human and nonhuman experiences can be imagined. Solutions to the environmental crisis must precede and predetermine economic decisions. Time is definancialised.


            A Contemplation of Freedom

Free Time means rest, and rest means free thought. Free thought allows for the flow of new ideas and new experiences of time without constraints.


            A Contemplation of Division

Time can be divided into units for measurement but cannot be divided in essence: time cannot be owned, thus be divided and distributed on any hierarchical basis. It is experienced and liberated by all, for all.


            A Contemplation of Chronology Weaving

Past and future inform and thus exist in the present. Multiscalar chronopolitics allows the imagination of struggle without replacing past and present struggles of patriarchy, class divide and racism with a destination of doom.



            A Contemplation of Time Spectrums

Entities travel with different velocities through time. Time is experienced in diverse ways.


            A Contemplation of Lifetime Weaving

The recognition of  various “times” across the globe and centuries acknowledge different spatial and temporal relationships between humans, animals, objects, worlds, etc. Like the branching filaments of hyphae underground lifetimes are in direct connection with others. 



            A Contemplation of Kinship

 Destructurization of the nuclear family schematics on a global and interspecies scale. The creation of an environment of expansive and abundant interspecies kinship and inter-being care.


            A Contemplation of Duration
Rather than an apocalypse ‘end’, time will continue even if humans disappear. In this we can imagine futures beyond the end of “our” world.



We hope our proposed contemplations aid to imagine expanded time. From contemplations of disentanglement from capitalism to its weaving into ecological balance, the extent to which we have colonised  time and thus also ‘nature’ becomes evident. We chose to keep our contemplations brief but also deep, allowing readers to delve into their dimensions in their own contexts. We aim to disregard the confining and relentless timeframe of capitalism. Time should not be defined by ethicless market forces and failures of humans. Freeing the human capitalisation of time means to allow for our natural surroundings to regain influence, rather than live in a peripheral existence around anthropocentric demands. Imagining time beyond what we are familiar with allows us to create kin instead of competitors. The ‘anthropocene’ places apocalypse in the future glossing over past and present instances of struggle and inequality. Our contemplations begin to imagine a multiscalar web which accepts human existence as a phase, rather than an all-powerful determiner and ‘ender’ of time.




Bibliography

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 2016.

Lowenhaupt Tsing, Ana. The Mushroom at the End of the World, 2021.

Naess, Arne. “The Deep Ecology Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects,” 2005.

(Photographs made by team members in Katwijk, Leiden, and The Hague)