The importance of this project has to do with how deeply wedded Modernity is to time as chronos. Chronos trains us to hold onto stable essences and to refuse to denaturalize the ticking clock. Modernity disallows us envisioning clock time as just one configuration of time. In Bergson’s view, we reduce time to space. In Serres’ view, a clock is not time; it is the measurement of time. It is actively ironing the crumpled handkerchief of time to smooth it out. To ask the thoroughly Modern question, “What time is it?” means that one is trying to synchronize durations. Will my plane land in time for me to get to my doctor appointment? Do I need to leave for work now? Which runner, each in their own flows of time, will cross the finish line first? We use clocks to smooth out an inherently out of joint time.

Chronological practices of time – time reduced to the spatial measurement of a clock – create several challenges that this project is designed to address:

• We reify time as the pure externality of our lives and thus train ourselves to see forces that exist outside of the here and now rather than being intimately involved in the dependent conditioning of the here and now.

• If Modernity has a concept of kairos, it is reduced to mere subjective experience of time, which leaves in place chronos as objective time. Subjects and objects become givens, and we cannot see the ways in which kairosand chronos dependently condition our subjectivity and objectivity.

• We think of time as one thing and therefore privilege its smooth flow as natural and normal. We miss the fact that interruption, simultaneity of durations, and time out of joint are inherent conditions of time as intersecting durations.