On Time consisted of two new commissions from Radar in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Studies' Time theme for the academic year 2020/21. 

Time is often understood as a neutral backdrop for events. Consistent, steady, reliable: it is the marker of history’s turbulence, the measure of work, and a fundamental building block of our society. While that which time makes possible—change, hope, fear, possibility, futurity and risk—are anything but knowable, the properties of time itself seem self-evident.

Yet behind time’s seemingly obvious nature lies mystery, disagreement and struggle. Philosophers ask whether time exists outside our experience of it. Physicists argue over its relationship to space. Revolutionaries shoot the clocks and instigate new calendars. Artists make it a fundamental medium of their work rather than the unstated background to it. Time is anything but a given.

The two works commissioned as part of On Time estrange us from time's background status by forcing us to pay attention to it. Alison Ballard and Martin Lewis' An Hour, an online event which took place in November 2020, consisted of performers attempting to count minutes for an hour. Paula Morison's What is (the) Time?, commissioned with Eastside Projects' Extra-Ordinary People, sees the artist send letters asking people 'what is the time?', and builds an archive from their replies.

Produced by David Bell for Radar.