KAIROS RELICS

Vessels of Personal History

The Ancient Greeks had two words for time: ‘Chronos’, the linear, predictable forward-motion of time; and ‘Kairos’, the moments that disobeyed Chronos’ logic - moments that stretched or where time stops entirely. Western culture has pursued a narrative of Chronos - or chorological - time, and whilst personal experience might not always seem to correlate comfortably with this narrative, we have not developed (or lost) a language to understand or explore time in alternate ways.

The Kairos Relics are artefacts to the more qualitative ‘Kairos’ experiences of time; the moments when the clock stops ticking or we loose hours in a heartbeat. Moments of falling in love, of grief, of self-sabotage, epiphany and redemption.

Utilising the objects and materials that signify these moments in our lives – letters, souvenirs, mementos - the Kairos Relics invite us to take these objects from our present surroundings and to place them into our past. Subjecting these materials to the processes of time – crushing, heating, compressing – and subsequently reforming them into new forms reminiscent of historical relics, we can play an active role in what these signifiers mean to our personal history and how we wish to carry them into our future.