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Commentary
by Beejay Silcox
April 2018, no. 400

‘I think that in a time when everything seems to be the victim of the pursuit of the moment, to have a natural rhythm which is completely to the counter, is almost in-and-of-itself something of a statement.’

Jonathan Green

Moments began as medieval measures, the time it took for a sundial’s blade of shadow to shift – ninety seconds or so, depending on the season. A slice of sunlight. A moment now carries cultural as well as temporal weight. A slice of spotlight. Increasingly, we speak of our present as a moment, as if its minutes are sprung like an ontological mousetrap, primed to snap. As Sam Anderson writes in The New York Times: ‘No nexus of events is too large or heterogeneous – no geopolitical weather too swirlingly turbulent – to avoid being reduced to the shorthand of the moment.’

 


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