August 20th, 2024, three unexpected time glitches (‘chronostases’ in Greek) occurred at intervals of roughly three seconds in the Kalvebod Brygge waterfront area in the Vesterbro part of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Once filled with factories, this part of the city has changed a lot over the years. Now, it has many new office buildings, hotels, and places for relaxation and bathing as a result of a project aimed at securing adequately clean water.
Bakthin on the ‘Chronotope’?
“Art & literature are shot through with chronotropic values of varying degree and scaope. Each motif, each separate aspect of artistic work bears value” — ‘Forms of Time and Chronotope in the novel’, Mikhail Bahktin*
The term chrono-tope consiting of Greek χρόνος (‘time’) and τόπος (‘space’), thus literally time-space’, was coined by Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakthin in 1937, shortly before World War 2.
Also see: Photographer in Copenhagen ~ Kasper Bergholt Photography
Definition from ‘The Dialogic Imagniation’, 1975-1981
“In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot, and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope.
Membranes of the logosphere
In Bakthin’s understanding, in common interpretations, the chronotope is where meaning enters the ‘logosphere’, leading to the question: how does meaning leave again, if it leaves? And of which material does this membrane consist of?
Might chronotopes provide access to iconic substrates of language that other ways perceiving does not? And could this ‘membrane’ be uniquely related, perhaps, to the modals of art and artistic experiences?
Sources
“Nothing passes without leaving a trace. All foregone will be accounted for. What comes to light is only what was hidden inside. What is gone, but requires external conditions and time to grow in order to open and reveal itself. That is the dominant in man, and the chronotope of Existence!” — Ukhtomsky: A.A.: ‘Dominant of the Soul’ Rybins, page 380.