CMU School of Drama


Monday, November 26, 2012

Ruled By Time

Radiolab: The self-declared Independent State of Trolheim does not recognize GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Jay Griffiths argues that the question of what time it is in inextricably bound up with issues of power and politics. And we'll hear a piece from producer Aaron Ximm on the experience of listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony for 24 hours straight- but only hearing it once.

1 comment:

Meg DC said...

This is a fascinating piece about the power of time in politics and domination. The segment reads off the manifesto of British Anti-Road protestors from the 50s which declares they will not use GMT, seeing time as a political structure. I never thought of time as being particularly political, but when the report discussed how the British controlled longitude with time and took their time to other places, I guess it is. But is time really so political anymore that if is a valuable protest? To protest time is to protest the world since the world on runs on one time system. Protesting time is like protesting that the world can be measured in degrees. Perhaps there is a different was to measure the world or keep time, but one way is so highly accepted that without it communication with the world would be stunted. Is self-ostricization really the goal?