Witnessing Time
- Noor Albar
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Time is non-linear, or is it? To exist in the world is to be in time, but to prove that existence is to be present in its past. When we stand in this linear non-linear realm, it is perhaps difficult to scale these experiences we have within it.
Meeting Emma Witter for the first time in London, we spoke about all things emotion and gratitude. In her studio lies a box of delicate bone dust that left me in awe. The box came into existence by instinct: she began collecting the residue of dust from carving bones for sculptural artworks, and later that dust became its own artwork. But did that dust know what it was to become? Did it perhaps tell Emma about its future during its present? Is that why Emma collected the small box of dust over years?
Emma's experience with time as an ingredient in her work is almost innate; some artworks start as food waste she collects after meals. Hours and hours before the making happens, lines of time before arriving, the artwork is called into existence.
To experience the vastness of time, wonders of emotions, and greatness of the world, sometimes, we must stand head-on facing it, for the sake of scale, of course. We see this in Dorothea Tanning's self-portrait as she stands by the Grand Canyon. We also see it in Emma's recent experience in Riyadh. When I heard that Emma was travelling to Saudi Arabia, it came as no surprise that she went to the Edge of the World rather than Riyadh's glamorous present. Emma had to face the vastness of nothing to see all of its everything. Though to her, the evidence of what used to be a sea is in the bones of its creatures lying at that edge, I dare say the evidence is in her presence as she stands witnessing it, paying gratitude to the presence or absence of that sea.
In that regard, she sits in awe of what was in front of her, but there is a name for that emotion; Shukr is a sacred feeling of gratitude performed by presenting your best self to acknowledge the creations of God by witnessing them in a state of meditation.
For the first time, Emma's relationship with the materials in her artwork shifted, from collecting to give new life, to witnessing to give new memories and proof.
While my reflections may have considered time speculatively, the following text paints a visual image of the terrain.
I leave you with another fragment of this conversation, a mirror poem written by Lauren Thomas
"I meet the day without her"
I meet the day without her,
the hills boned and open at the horizon,
the pink dawn releasing stars,
her body returned
where she had stretched, warm
in borders on spring days,
foxgloves rising like himiko clouds.
Now still and curled, an ammonite, we place
her in the earth, a favourite patch of light.
The beginning is as simple
as the rising of the sun,
we existed long before
where dark waters spun
galaxies of coral,
of slow-moving forms.
The earth shifts— winds strip the plains bare,
there in shale and sandstone all vestiges
here like remnants of a fish bone sky,
cirrus clouds of rib and spine,
each the other’s skeleton slept
in sediment
in sediment
each the other’s skeleton slept,
cirrus clouds of rib and spine,
here like remnants of a fish bone sky,
there in shale and sandstone all vestiges.
The earth shifts— winds strip the plains bare
of slow-moving forms,
galaxies of coral
where dark waters spun.
We existed long before
as the rising of the sun.
The beginning is as simple
her in the earth, a favourite patch of light—
now still and curled, an ammonite, we place
foxgloves rising like himiko clouds
in borders on spring days,
where she had stretched, warm,
her body returned,
the pink dawn releasing stars,
the hills boned and open at the horizon.
I meet the day without her.
This text, along with the mirror poem were first published on Emma Witter's Patreon, click to view the full newsletter.
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