Timebenders

A Triadic Sonic Cartography of Time - Three Timebenders

TIMEBENDERS unites three distinct yet deeply interwoven artistic practices that together build a nuanced, sensorially rich exploration of time. These artists do not merely illustrate chronoception—they dissect, perform, and recompose time itself through sound, gesture, space, and rhythm. Their contributions are not isolated moments, but interdependent layers in a collectively expanded perception of temporal experience.

With:
Arnold Dreyblatt
Jan Jelinek
Seiji Morimoto & Kyoco Taniyama

*Festival of Future Nows 2025, a cooperative project of the Neue Nationalgalerie – Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Institute for Spatial Experiments e.V., initiated by Klaus Biesenbach and Olafur Eliasson.

Can sound and music change time - not just our perception of it, but time itself?

Or is it merely our perception that shifts?

TIMEBENDERS experiments with these questions through a triadic series of performances that explore time as something elastic, relational, and alive. Over three days at the Festival of Future Nows, four artists become the Timebenders: shaping time through vibration, silence, and rhythm until it bends, expands, or dissolves entirely.

If time is relative, as both physics and philosophy suggest, how might vibration, rhythm, and resonance act upon it?
 Do they stretch the flow of time, bend its continuity, or simply shift our awareness of its passing? 
Listening itself requires anchoring in the now — yet how do we, through sound, fast-forward or slow down within that very moment?

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we collectively experienced a distortion in our perception of time. At first, time felt slow and drawn out; later, it seemed to accelerate unpredictably. This shift revealed how our internal sense of time does not always align with external measurements such as calendars and clocks. TIMEBENDERS expands on this phenomenon through sonic and musical explorations, offering audiences a chance to experience shifts in temporal perception in real time.

The series has its cues in traditions that perceive time not as linear, but relational, cyclical, and lived. Across cultures, time has never been a single line.
 In Japan, Ma defines rhythm through the interval — the meaningful pause that gives sound its shape.
 In Sufi traditions, Dhikr uses repetition to transcend the self, entering states where time suspends.
 And in East African Bantu cosmologies, Zamani, as described by philosopher John S. Mbiti, names the deep past — a living continuum that constantly absorbs the now; the future unfolds, like space, only at the moment we step into it.

TIMEBENDERS listens to these philosophies through the materiality of sound: drone, glitch, loops, silence, and spatial resonance.
 Each performance becomes a laboratory of temporal transformation — a space where duration stretches, memory layers, and the present remakes itself. Each event in the series presents artists, composers, and sound experts who transform contrasting distortions of perceptual time into structured musical and sonic forms. Through the use of loops, silence, high-paced rhythms, and immersive soundscapes, the participating artists explore the elasticity of time, inviting audiences to experience altered states of temporal awareness.

Neuroscience provides insights into how music creates alternative temporal dimensions. Research suggests that during intense musical engagement, activity in the prefrontal cortex—responsible for introspection—diminishes, shifting the focus to sensory processing. This can result in a selfless, Zen-like state where time appears to suspend or flow differently. As neuroscientist Ilan Goldberg describes, "the term ‘losing yourself’ receives here a clear neuronal correlate.”

Throughout the event series, performances highlight how sound and music can suspend, accelerate, or fragment our experience of time. Each artist brings a distinct approach, offering different methodologies to bend, reshape, and challenge our perception through listening. Whether through drone compositions, glitch aesthetics, loops, silence, or spatial sound manipulations, TIMEBENDERS becomes a laboratory of temporal transformation — a space where duration stretches, memory layers, and the present remakes itself.

Ece Pazarbaşı

* The research phase of Timebenders was realised with the support of the State of Berlin, Senate Department for Culture and Europe.