TIME AND TIMELESSNESS
An exploration into Time and Timelessness through philosophy, theology, physics, art, music, poetry and film.
Wednesday 19th February
ANDREW MARR
From 6.30pm upstairs at the Peter Pears Gallery, 152 High Street, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, IP15 5AQ
Andrew Marr presents his exhibition, Time and Timelessness for which he chose paintings by his favourite artists Gillian Ayres, John Hoyland, Patrick Heron and Henri Matisse to hang alongside his own paintings. He spoke of how painting is an important part of his life and quest for transcendence.
Click here to see a video taken on the opening night of Egg Time.
PROCREATION (ADAM & EVE)
Followed by the first UK screening of Procreation (Adam and Eve) by Lol Sargent, premiered at the Venice Biennale 2019 as part of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE
Click here to watch the film and find out more.
END GAME
The first UK screening of End Game by David Baldry, premiered as part of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE, Venice Biennale 2019
Click here to find out more.
EGG TIME
A performance work in which we scramble eggs to demonstrate the irreversibility of time. Then we sit down with Andrew Marr and other special guests on long tables and eat scrambled eggs, drink wine and discuss and ponder time and timelessness. Delicious organic eggs kindly donated by Maple Farm, Kelsale.
Click here to watch the performance.
EGG MASSAGE
The first screening of a new version of this film by Sarah Lucas and Julian Simmons, screened at Alive in the Universe, Venice Biennale 2019.
Thursday 20th February
TIME AND TIMELESSNESS
10.30am at the Peter Pears Gallery
Caroline Wiseman, founder of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE, introduces one of her newest book ‘A Timeless Moment’
Click here for details.
RAIK’A
11.15am at the Peter Pears Gallery
Judy Goldhill and Steven Fogel present Raki'a.
In this session Judy Goldhill and Steven Fogel showed a clip from their film Raki’a which they made for Alive in the Universe in Venice. Steven gave an illustrated talk, Judy talked about her artist's residencies in the observatories of North and South America and they both answered questions from the audience . Steven’s talk, which opens the film, covered subjects ranging from the history of time measurement to “space time”and the paradox of time travel. Click here to watch the film and find out more.
RICHARD DEMARCO
12 noon at the Peter Pears Gallery
Caroline Wiseman in conversation with Richard Demarco. Demarco was Professor of European Culture at the University of Kingston and has a long distinguished career in the arts.
He considers how time and timelessness are fundamental to art from antiquity through modernism to now.
Click here to watch.
NEVER NEVER MIND
1pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
The first Suffolk screening of Never Never Mind by Abigail Lane.
Never Never Mind is a video work that is projected as a continuous loop. It shows a sequence of pigeons flying in and out of the image frame - sometimes perched on it's bottom edge for a moment, only to be pushed off by another bird, sometimes hurled into the white background. It is shot in black and white and edited in a rough fast way which produces a nervous effect.
Click here to watch.
GRENVILLE DAVEY
1pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
We are delighted to welcome Turner Prize winner, Grenville Davey to participate in our Time and Timelessness symposium.
A HISTORY OF TIME
2.30pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
Presented by David Berman, Professor in Theoretical Physics at Queen Mary University of London.
The classical description of time by Newton separated it from space and gave it a privileged position in the description of nature. Einstein's view changed all of that combining it with space to form a single entity of spacetime. This gave the image of an unchanging four dimensional universe at odds with our perception of the world. Thermodynamics with its ideas of entropy and free energy provide us with a way for putting arrow of time inside this four dimensional space and reconcile our personal view of time.
Click here to watch.
THE FOUR QUARTETS, T.S. ELLIOT
3.45pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
We listen to the recording by Ralph Fiennes as we lie on the floor and think about time and timelessness. A tribute to the late Janet Treloar.
INTIMATE TASTES OF TIME
6.30pm - 9.00pm Aldeburgh Beach Lookout
Join Miche and Flora for a convivial experience of time and consciousness through food in the candlelit hearth of the South Lookout Tower. Sip botanical brews, savour plant-based fayre and enjoy enlivening conversations. Tickets £20 per head. Places are very limited.
Book early with Flora at all@touchstones.earth
Friday 21st February
EILEEN HARING WOODS, HETEROTOPIA: OPEROSE
10.30am at the Peter Pears Gallery
World premiere of a work in progress inspired by Michel Foucault’s theory of Heterotopia.
Click here to watch.
TIME AND TIMELESSNESS IN THE CLASSICS
10.45am at the Peter Pears Gallery
Mark Fairweather explores The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost and other classics with readings by Madeleine Wynn.
Click here to watch.
ONE WORLD, MANY FAITHS
11.30am at the Peter Pears Gallery
Cynthia Capey, Angela Oakey-Jones and friends introduce representatives of different faiths living in East Anglia who will reflect on Time and Timelessness in the light of their inherited traditions and their lived experiences.
Click here to find out more.
CAROLINE WRIGHT
1pm at the Peter Pears Gallery, lunchtime
Join us for the first UK screening of Breath Control: At the point of perforation, installation, 2019 by Caroline Wright, premiered as part of ALIVE IN THE UNIVERSE at the Venice Biennale 2019.
Click here to watch.
TIME OUT OF MIND
2.30pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
Daughter of Sir Peter Hall, the writer and actress Jenny Hall illustrates how Shakespeare uses the concept of time and timelessness in his plays.
Click here to watch.
TIME EXPERIENCE AND REALITY
Time and timelessness: philosophical considerations
A. C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil (Oxon) FRSA FRSL is the Master of the New College of the Humanities, London, and its Professor of Philosophy. He is also a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas, and essays.
Click here to watch.
BILL JACKSON
5.15pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
Dark/Light, The Venetian Mirror
Two screen video work premiered as part of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE, Venice Biennale 2019
Click here to watch Bill Jackson in conversation with Caroline Wiseman.
PROCREATION (ADAM AND EVE)
5.45pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
Screening of Procreation (Adam and Eve) by Lol Sargent, premiered at the Venice Biennale 2019 as part of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE
END GAME
6pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
Screening of End Game by David Baldry, premiered as part of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE, Venice Biennale 2019.
Click here to find out more and watch the film.
Saturday 22nd February
MINDFULNESS, POETRY AND MEDITATION
9.30am at the Peter Pears Gallery
Led by Carol Lawrence.
HENRI BERGSON AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERNISM
10.30am in the Peter Pears gallery
Caroline Wiseman presents Henri Bergson and his influence on Modernism in relation to Proust, Gertrude Stein, T S Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
INFINITY
11.15am at the Peter Pears Gallery
Caroline Wiseman tells the story of how Einstein medallist, Professor Sir Roger Penrose OM, described his theory of the cycles of time, CCC Conformal cyclic cosmology, to her and to his cousin Susie Penrose over lunch in Oxford. Sir Roger says: "I thought your article gave a very beautiful romantic angle on our discussion the other day. I enjoyed reading it and having real empathy for your little photon!"
Click here to hear A Journey into Infinity read by Caroline Wiseman
CONCIOUSNESS
11.30am at the Peter Pears Gallery
This pivotal session on consciousness is drawn together by Hugo Stevensen who combines a background in the humanities (he studied philosophy under A C Grayling at the New College of the Humanities) and neuroscience of the brain, so that we understand how we are aware of time and timelessness.
Click here to watch.
PHILOSOPHER’S LUNCH
12.30pm at the Peter Pears gallery
In the History of Philosophy A C Grayling recounts how Xenophanes describes a Philosophers Lunch ’The floor is clean, so are our hands, and so are the cups…a mixing bowl stands by, and another bowl of gentle flower-scented wine… there is cold, sweet pure water, golden loaves of bread, and a magnificent table laden with cheese and rich honey’ We must not talk of myths and wars but of ‘excellence’ This was a good opportunity to join in the discussion with our eminent thinkers.
SOPHIE MOLINS
1.45pm Peter Pears Gallery, lunchtime
Screening of Ending Happy Ever After by Sophie Molins, premiered as part of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE at the Venice Biennale 2019.
Click here to watch.
BLAKE MORRISON: TIME AFTER TIME IN MODERN POETRY
2.30pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
Blake Morrison, Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London discusses how time and timelessness are expressed through contemporary literature and poetry, including his own.
Click here to watch.
GABRIEL JOSIPOVICI
3.45pm at Peter Pears Gallery
Andrew McDonald in conversation with Gabriel Josipovici, who describes how he uses the concepts of time and timelessness in his writing.
Andrew McDonald lives near Orford. He studied Japanese and Philosophy some time ago at Cambridge, and has been reading and collecting books ever since. His cinema, the Sudbourne Alhambra, is the smallest and least comfortable in Suffolk.
Followed by a book launch for Josipovici’s new novel, Forgetting.
ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS IN PRACTICE
5pm in the Peter Pears gallery
Join Carol Lawrence, Angela Oakey-Jones and Caroline Wiseman, as we practise and compare different types of altered consciousness: mindfulness, prayer and creativity.
THE HOURS
7.45pm for 8pm Aldeburgh Cinema
This gala evening begins at 7.45pm with a glass of prosecco in the Studio of Aldeburgh cinema.
In the early part of the 20th century, Virginia Woolf struggles to complete her novel 'Mrs Dalloway’. The Hours is a 2002 psychological
drama film directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore. Music score by Philip Glass.
Sunday 23rd February
MORNING SERVICE AT ALDEBURGH PARISH CHURCH
10.30am - 11.30am at St Peter and St Paul, Victoria Road, Aldeburgh
This is a special service devoted to time and timelessness with a sermon given by Malcolm Doney who will have experienced our Festival with us.
MALCOM DONEY
Malcolm Doney grew up under the flight path for Heathrow Airport. He studied fine art at St Martin’s School of Art - now Central St Martin’s UAL - before pursuing a career in journalsim, advertising and broadcasting. He has written ten books, including with his wife Meryl, Who Made Me?, a sex guide for 7 year olds. They road-tested the book and have two children.
He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought, and Radio 4’s Something Understood. He lives in a village on the Suffolk coast where he keeps sheep and chickens, and is a volunteer priest in his parish church, sometimes joined by his horse, Neville.
DALE DEVEREUX BARKER
12 noon - 1pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
‘The silence between sounds’ an open forum drumming symposium.
This event welcomes all to take part in an experimental drumming workshop that will set out to create a single audio piece made up and dissonant and varied percussive sounds. This piece will be loosely orchestrated but participants need no previous musical background or training but a willingness to enjoy taking part in a collective event.
FILM SCREENINGS AND OPEN MIC
2.30pm at the Peter Pears Gallery
Open mic, poetry readings curated by our festival pop up poet, Ian Griffiths; musical performances and another chance to see each of the films premiered as part of ALIVE in the UNIVERSE at the Venice Biennale 2019 by: David Baldry, Eileen Haring Woods, Andrew Hewish, Bill Jackson, Abigail Lane, Sophie Molins, Lol Sargent, Caroline Wright.