Arrows of Time - a live performance event

‘Arrows of Time’ is a live performance event involving film which has developed out of the researcher’s collaborations with physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre. The research includes films of their conversation and demonstrations, comprising 40 interchangeable elements. Ten focus on philosophically oriented literary works, 10 have an action/pedagogic element, ten revolve around a central character and ten re-concerned with contemporary physics.

These discreet elements are treated as a resource which can be combined in sequence and edited in real time so that each live performance has the potential to be different from the next. A key aspect of the research method is that the elements that have been selected are powerfully instructive in themselves, but when put in association with each other an effect of resonance/correspondence is created. In this way a theorist such as Michael Peskin talking about dark matter is juxtaposed with a poem by Fernando Pessoa in which he describes a time when suddenly a blindness is lifted and he could see for the first time.

The cast included the researcher’s film of Jacques Derrida, literary works read by the actress Maria de Medeiros, and SLAC scientists including Roger Blandford, Philip Bucksbaum and Maruša Bradač and Neil Calder.

'Arrows of Time', world premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) on 27th April 2007 as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was also performed in the McBean Theatre at SLAC on 29th April and at SLAC’s Kavli Auditorium on 30th April.

Ken McMullen is a Research Professor who specialises in creative practice across a range of forms including documentary and feature films, projections, live performances and visual essays. The research frequently draws from history, philosophy, literature and psychoanalysis.

A further preoccupation is the intersection between art and science particularly particle physics, astrophysics and photon science. This interest has been manifest in collaborations with scientists at the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) in Geneva and the Stanford National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) operated by Stanford University, Menlo Park, California.

A programme of Professor Ken McMullen's films and visual essays, including new works such as Arrows of Time and Lumin De Lumine, were highlighted in the Festival which was held in the Greek Film Archive in Athens from 9th to 11th October 2009. These recent works were created as an outcome of collaborations with scientists at CERN in Geneva and Stanford University. Two new works are currently in post-production, 'Guns and Poetry' and 'An Organisation of Time'.

• http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/Ken_McMullen_r...
• http://www.symmetrymagazine.org
• http://www.slac.stanford.edu/