It was fascinating for me this week, to read Judith Butler and Hannah Arendt next to each other; to see the relations, shared – and differently developed ideas. I am interested in how the two authors bring time and rhythm into play. On p.75 Judith Butler poses the question: “How do we understand this acting together that opens up time and space outside and against the established architecture and temporality of the regime? (….)”
“This time of the interval is one in which the assembled bodies articulate a new time and space for the popular will (…) as an alliance of distinct and adjacent bodies whose action and whose inaction demand a different future.” What exactly is this new time, this opposing temporality that Butler is talking about?
Hannah Arendt (p.214): “Where the biological rhythm of labor unites the group of laborers to the point that each may feel that he is no longer an individual but actually one with all others, (…) this eases labor’s toil and trouble in much the same way as marching together ceases the effort of walking for each soldier.”
I think the established architecture of the regime could be seen as the notion of “meter” in music. Also Hannah Arendt might actually be talking about the facism of meter and not rhythm. The meter that is imposed on the biological rhyhtms (plural) of labour and frames the pulse. Judith Butler is talking about the interval, Hannah Arendt about the “Erscheinungsraum- the space of appearance (Nabokov about the grey gap between black beats). Maybe we do not need one meter that keeps a measured amount of beats controlled, but to share a pulse that allows for interdependency through the possible plurality of polyrhythmic shared space and time.
Maybe as for many others this week, the dancer and performance artist Erdem Gündüz was constantly in my mind while reading, mostly because of the exactly this “new” time and space he created, this unpredictable, out of meter temporality through the standing man. ( We met him just shortly after the protest when were in Istanbul with the conservatory for dance). I wanted to share these videos, even though unfortunately I could not find such good material online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNONsBm-bv0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO8hkU4uK2g
