Holding Time is an experimental project combining haptic clock sculptures and film, created by Cathy Mager and Spectroscope. Through moving image, poetry, sound and vibration, it invites audiences to experience time through touch.
The first sculpture transforms a salvaged grandfather clock into a portal where deaf dancer Anna Seymour moves to her own rhythm. Embedded screens hold her performance, while sounds recorded from the clock’s broken bells become vibrations that visitors can feel by touching its wooden body.
We hope to gather a collection of clocks, each possessed by a different performer and a different perspective on time. Together, they will form a travelling collection of movements, stories and rhythms.
“Time has never felt neutral to me. It bends, stretches and behaves differently depending on where I am, who I’m with, or what my body is dealing with that day.”
Cathy Mager
“Time has never felt neutral to me. It bends, stretches and behaves differently depending on where I am, who I’m with, or what my body is dealing with that day.”
Cathy Mager, Artistic Director and founder of Spectroscope
A clock felt through touch
Holding Time is rooted in Cathy’s deaf family history and a treasured grandfather clock passed down through three generations. Her mother learned to wind it by placing two fingers on the clock’s face, feeling the bells mark the hours rather than hearing them.
That gesture sits at the heart of the project: time is something we feel through our bodies, as well as something we read on a clock. The first sculpture carries this history into a new form. Its recorded bells live on through sound and vibration, while the dancer within it offers another way of marking time.
Two timelines meeting
In the accompanying film, the clock appears in unexpected places, from woodland clearings and urban streets to the Somerset coast.
Inside it, Anna Seymour performs to a rhythm that belongs entirely to her. Around her, deaf performers David Ellington and Ciaran O’Brien encounter the clock as the outside world speeds up, slows down and drifts out of sync. A poem written by Cathy Mager and narrated by actor Samantha Baines accompanies these encounters. Two timelines occupy the same frame, inviting us to reconsider the idea that time is universal.
Time on our own terms
Holding Time explores deaf time and crip time: the ways deaf and disabled people experience, negotiate and reshape time within systems built around speed, productivity and rigid deadlines.
It also makes room for pleasure, connection and play. A signed conversation stretches into the evening; leaving a gathering takes hours because nobody wants the connection to end. Time moves differently according to who we are with and what our bodies need. Through sculpture and film, the project explores the freedom to be seen on our own timeline.
A growing collection
The first clock is the beginning of a wider project. We hope to develop further haptic clock sculptures with deaf and disabled performers, each bringing their own movement, presence and understanding of time.
As the clocks travel, we hope they will gather stories about how people spend time, hold it, stretch it or find a rhythm of their own. The collection will grow through the people and places it encounters. If you are interested in developing Holding Time with us, as a performer, collaborator, commissioner or presenting partner, we would love to hear from you.
Get in touch with Spectroscope.
Credits
Created and directed by Cathy Mager
Performed by Anna Seymour, David Ellington and Ciaran O’Brien
Written by Cathy Mager
Narrated by Samantha Baines
Edited by Patrick Shead Simmonds
Clock fabricated by Rich White
Commissioned by The Space with support from Arts Council England.