The Clock(s) of A Drawing and the Hermetic Time-Reader/Teller: Dreaming of Drawingdials and the Enigmatic Hour(s) of A Drawing

Abstract

How do we read the time? Who tell(s) the time? Whose voice(s) do we hear? The historical trajectories of the act of ‘reading the time’ passes beyond looking at a ticking mechanical clock, thus also beyond a purely mathematical calculation and construct. It is also not a mere co-ordinational matter set between the earth and the universe, but it also includes ‘us’ as ‘the hermetic reader/teller/writer’ as an integral part of it. Sundials and astrolabes manifest the existence of this ‘hermetic time-reader’ primarily as a ‘drawing’. These time-telling drawings/instruments are in fact the result of an embodied reading of the universe, which in turn become ‘projective’ reading/divination machines that compel interpretive narratives from the ‘reader’. In order to explore the curious spatio-temporal, embodied practice of divination of a drawing through the act of drawing, and also in order to unfold ‘us’ - ‘the drawer’ as the integral ‘hermetic reader’ in the drawing, we decided to ask ourselves the possibility of ‘the clock(s) of a drawing’ and work on this question speculatively in our elective course in the fall semester 2021-2022. Our project, “The Clock(s) of a Drawing and Drawingdials” started firstly as an embodied reading of a selected drawing through variegated projective methods. In due course, the projective cast of drawing demonstrated itself not as a static construct, but as a ritualistic, ephemeral and poetic act – as drawingdials. These projective drawingdials, with the ‘hermetic drawers’ as a part of them, are constantly re-read and re-written, almost transforming themselves into enigmatic drawing-instruments. The enigmatic hours of a drawing are then crystallized within the projective and embodied languages and constructions of drawing itself.