Jean Martin & Wil Pennycook

The journey to create One Minute Past began with Lethe, the river of oblivion, at whose source poppies and wild flowers grow. We discovered that Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades.

We found ourselves excavating Greek mythology, Hades and the imagined underworld where we all will go. Using water as a metaphor allowed us to attempt to show what is not imaginable. But what was it that we were moving towards, trying to give shape to?

Our piece is a meditation about the passing of time. It opens with the call of an owl, Athena’s bird; a call to wisdom. We imagined the underworld as dark and cold. Above, in the world we know, the nature of being is coming and going, being born and dying. What is this mysterious phenomenon called time? The essence of being is time – says Heidegger. The opposite of being is nothing. We tried to give the nothing a form by creating an audiovisual atmosphere, where the perception of time slows down. 

What is the connection between oblivion, the underworld and how we are inhabiting this earth? The Greek oikos, the root of ecology, means house. The earth is our house, but we seem unable to bear the reality of our behaviour within it, many of us appearing oblivious to the harms we are doing: the individual escape into oblivion and the collective denial of our actions.

 “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I have drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains, one minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.” John Keats.

One Minute Past is a single screen film (length: 15mins) with a stereo soundtrack.  It will be screened in the Sallis Benney Theatre on 17 March from 17.00 to 19.00.
The large screen and sound diffusion will create a strong immersive experience. Look out for the announcement on the Third Thursdays website.

Moving images by Wil Pennycook, music by Jean Martin.