Proper Time
Raquel Meseguer Zafe, Anna Starkey & Jamie McCarthy
Photo taken during a research exchange between Sarah Hopfinger and Raquel Meseguer Zafe in 2018. Photo Credit: Chelsey Cliff.
A woman in a pink salmon top and long curly hair gently bends and curves towards us. The shape their body makes is soft, rather than effortful. They look towards the ground, sensing intently. They are caught in a bright shaft of sunlight. In the background another figure, blurred, echoes her pose. They wear a khaki green jumpsuit and look towards the first figure.
“Mosses live on very little, they live on meagre soil, water and nutrients. But they survive. Sometimes my world is small and I live on meagre joy, social interaction and movement. But I survive. When water is scarce the mosses can dry themselves out and wait for the rains - for years, for decades. I too have spent years waiting for the rains. And when they came, they were wonderful.”
This is an evolving project about time: crip time and slow time. Time as an existential and physical experience. Time that relates to space, presence and scale.
In collaboration with curator and writer Anna Starkey and musician and composer Jamie McCarthy – both of whom currently or in the past have experienced chronic illness – Raquel Meseguer Zafe and her team are beginning development on her latest project Proper Time.
Using a remote and in-person correspondence model, the project will share stories of and create space for disabled experiences of time. The process will centre care and rest, and explore the ‘stretch’ and ‘temporality’ of a long form residency.
Part science lecture - part live music gig - part movement - part theatre. Proper Time will consider what can be made when you don’t have to push through pain and fatigue to make it.
Supported by Level Centre and produced by MAYK.
For more information, please email kate@mayk.org.uk.