More than fifty years ago, the art historian George Kubler wrote that time is, “like mind, not knowable as such” (1962:13).1 Kubler was concerned with human difficulties in understanding time other than by looking back upon the material record to assess processes of change and permanence. He did not, however, question how time is conceived in situation-specific modes or how it might play out differently based on location. We do live in a world made up of multiple times. Reproductive “clocks” tick according to biological time, the continents move on geological time, our watches are set to the precision of US Naval Observatory time. As scientific as such measurements may be, time is always a cultural construction. Precolonial African societies had their own senses of time, and rather than linear or strictly so, some understood time to be circular or a spiral leading from origins to present...
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Winter 2015
December 01 2015
Senses of Time: Video and Film-Based Arts of Africa
Karen E. Milbourne,
Karen E. Milbourne
Karen E. Milbourne is Curator at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of African Art. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Iowa, based upon long research on Lozi visual and performance arts of Zambia. She was the curator and author of NMAfA's exhibition “Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa” (2013) and curates the ongoing exhibition series “Artists in Dialogue,” as well as overseeing such projects as “Yinka Shonibare MBE” and “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists.” [email protected]
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Mary Nooter Roberts,
Mary Nooter Roberts
Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts is Professor in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, Consulting Curator for African Art at LACMA, and a co-editor of African Arts. She holds an MA/PhD in Art History from Columbia University, and served as Senior Curator at the Museum for African Art in New York until 1994 and as Deputy Director and Chief Curator of UCLA's Fowler Museum until 2008. Her award-winning works include Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (1996) and A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (2003). In 2007, she was decorated by the Republic of France as a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. [email protected]
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Allen F. Roberts
Allen F. Roberts
Allen F. Roberts is Professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA and a co-editor of African Arts. He is a sociocultural anthropologist (PhD University of Chicago, 1980) specializing in African arts and humanities. His monograph A Dance of Assassins: Performing Early Colonial Hegemony in the Congo (2013, Indiana University Press) won ACASA's Arnold Rubin Award as the best book on African arts of 2011–2013, and was a finalist for ASA's Herskovits Prize as one of the five best books in African Studies of 2013. [email protected]
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Karen E. Milbourne
Karen E. Milbourne is Curator at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of African Art. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Iowa, based upon long research on Lozi visual and performance arts of Zambia. She was the curator and author of NMAfA's exhibition “Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa” (2013) and curates the ongoing exhibition series “Artists in Dialogue,” as well as overseeing such projects as “Yinka Shonibare MBE” and “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists.” [email protected]
Mary Nooter Roberts
Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts is Professor in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, Consulting Curator for African Art at LACMA, and a co-editor of African Arts. She holds an MA/PhD in Art History from Columbia University, and served as Senior Curator at the Museum for African Art in New York until 1994 and as Deputy Director and Chief Curator of UCLA's Fowler Museum until 2008. Her award-winning works include Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (1996) and A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (2003). In 2007, she was decorated by the Republic of France as a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. [email protected]
Allen F. Roberts
Allen F. Roberts is Professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA and a co-editor of African Arts. He is a sociocultural anthropologist (PhD University of Chicago, 1980) specializing in African arts and humanities. His monograph A Dance of Assassins: Performing Early Colonial Hegemony in the Congo (2013, Indiana University Press) won ACASA's Arnold Rubin Award as the best book on African arts of 2011–2013, and was a finalist for ASA's Herskovits Prize as one of the five best books in African Studies of 2013. [email protected]
Online ISSN: 1937-2108
Print ISSN: 0001-9933
© 2015 by the Regents of the University of California.
2015
African Arts (2015) 48 (4): 72–84.
Citation
Karen E. Milbourne, Mary Nooter Roberts, Allen F. Roberts; Senses of Time: Video and Film-Based Arts of Africa. African Arts 2015; 48 (4): 72–84. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_r_00255
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