For my performance art project this semester, I was paired to work with Yuri and initially we were puzzled by the assignment and exactly what we could do that could capture a unique essence of time that wasn’t too “literal” for our audience. As we researched other famous performance art pieces, we came across a piece done by Wen Yau called “Wish You Were Here” which was done blindfolded. Once we saw this piece, we began to think about the vulnerability and complexity that happens once crucial senses are taken away. We wanted to explore how our sense of time could be altered once sight is taken out of the picture but most importantly how drastically it can (or cannot) alter from person to person.
In order to make our exploration possible, we decided to show altered time through blind folding both of us on a large sheet of muslin along with a set of instructions of what to draw during our own interpretation of a duration of a minute. For the last minute, we decided to write out as many curse words as possible since we assumed we’d probably feel very frustrated after sitting without sight for four minutes.
I can’t speak for Yuri, but during the performance I definitely felt a bit lost at times and that time was passing by very slowly. When we were asked to take our blindfolds off, I was honestly surprised that the entire experience went by so quickly. Through this, I think time goes by much quicker when you can’t look or focus on the actual passing of time.
