The projection Passages of time is an overlapping of the dust live-streamed from the artwork’s surrounding airscape, as part of the installation Particular Matter(s) Jam session, and a film that lasts 163,000 years. It is the length of time needed for the light emitted by the Large Magellanic Cloud to reach us. Located in the Mensa and Dorado constellations, this dwarf spiral galaxy can be seen at night in the southern celestial hemisphere. However, we see it with a delay of 163,000 years. When we observe it, we see nothing but the past.

The video was recorded in the salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia. The waves of the lake echo to the gravitational waves that form the soundtrack of the video. What we hear might come from the collision of two black holes, events that occur across billions of years.

This video questions our linear conception of time. First, because gravitational waves are disturbances in the curvature of space-time. Then, because the perception of time also depends on each species. Flies perceive 250 frames per second, turtles only 15. The first will see this video in slow motion and the second accelerated. The more perceptual frames that each second holds for an organism, the shorter its life. The question remains which species will be able to attend the end of the video in 163,000 years.