Roadstead, Sea Lock, Deepwater Port
Liquid Time (Miriam Matthiessen & Jacob Bolton)
FieldARTS/Sonic Acts, 2023
Liquid Time (Miriam Matthiessen & Jacob Bolton)
FieldARTS/Sonic Acts, 2023
“Roadstead, Sea Lock, Deepwater Port” is a project born out of field work at the 2022 FieldARTS Transitional Waters Residency in Amsterdam. It was presented the following year as a performance lecture at the FieldARTS x Sonic Acts Maritime Frictions event in Ruigoord, outside Amsterdam:
Liquid Time’s lecture performance speculates on logistics as a project of time management: process of distributing, expropriating and configuring planetary time. Based on field research carried out in the Ij estuary to the west of Amsterdam, the duo map out three sites throughout time that each, in their own way, encapsulated enact a particular temporal dynamic within maritime space: from the harbour that shielded Dutch East India Company ships from storms in the sixteenth century, to the newly opened Sea Lock – the largest moving metal structure in the world – designed to allow mega ships to enter Amsterdam. The studies of these sites are specific to the Ij estuary, and to particular points in history. But in logistics nothing is isolated, no site is specific. These sites exceed their specific time and space: they act as lenses to look at the temporality of capital more broadly, or can be understood as temporal and spatial archetypes found in ports all over the world. Along the way, Liquid Time charts the oceanic and anthropogenic rhythms that form each location, the building blocks of what they call the ‘infrarhythm’ of logistics. Over time, the music changes – from galleons bound for the colonies to the mega ships of today – but the song remains the same.
Liquid Time’s lecture performance speculates on logistics as a project of time management: process of distributing, expropriating and configuring planetary time. Based on field research carried out in the Ij estuary to the west of Amsterdam, the duo map out three sites throughout time that each, in their own way, encapsulated enact a particular temporal dynamic within maritime space: from the harbour that shielded Dutch East India Company ships from storms in the sixteenth century, to the newly opened Sea Lock – the largest moving metal structure in the world – designed to allow mega ships to enter Amsterdam. The studies of these sites are specific to the Ij estuary, and to particular points in history. But in logistics nothing is isolated, no site is specific. These sites exceed their specific time and space: they act as lenses to look at the temporality of capital more broadly, or can be understood as temporal and spatial archetypes found in ports all over the world. Along the way, Liquid Time charts the oceanic and anthropogenic rhythms that form each location, the building blocks of what they call the ‘infrarhythm’ of logistics. Over time, the music changes – from galleons bound for the colonies to the mega ships of today – but the song remains the same.