This artist talk explores visual strategies for imagining the body clock and the friction between the internal time of the body and the external time of the world. It takes as its starting point recent exhibition BODY CLOCKS, which consisted of a series of artworks installed throughout the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research in Copenhagen and was developed in collaboration with circadian researchers at the Centre.
The science of chronobiology reveals how we are both made of and subject to time. Our circadian rhythms are driven by environmental cues which tell our brain what time it is and tune our body clocks to the world around us. Our internal rhythms are intimately entangled with the temporalities of our external environment, but this entanglement is complex, affected by multiple factors in and out of the body. We contain our own time, which doesn’t always sync with the external time regimes we exist within.
The metaphor of the ‘body clock’ is a powerful tool for sharing the science of circadian rhythms with the public, it is often imagined as mechanical timepiece, time ticking with a circular regularity. These visualisations affect how we relate to our internal temporalities, and shape our understanding of how they function. ‘My Body is a Clock’ dissects the impact of these interpretations on our perception of the bodies’ circadian systems, using the exhibition artworks as visual prompts to propose alternative ways for imagining our complex temporal entanglement with our environment
Bio: Isabella Martin (UK) is a visual artist with a research-based, interdisciplinary practice, driven by collaboration with the sciences to explore the friction and entanglement between our bodies and the world. Her ongoing research focuses on external and internal temporalities. Over the last two years she has worked on Z TIME, a project exploring the experience of time in the body through the study of circadian rhythms in the laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Basic Metabolic Research in Copenhagen. Her solo exhibition BODY CLOCKS recently opened at the Centre. Isabella holds a BA(hons) in Sculpture from Brighton University and an MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She has exhibited internationally, with recent works shown at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Medical Museion, Udden Skulpturpark and Kurz Film Festival.