Arts Thread

‘Deep In Time’ engages with the concept of deep time, and its autonomy. Time that extends beyond that of which we can see. Its depth is recorded in geology. The earth is a palimpsest – layering the past and present through sediment and metamorphosed rock. Scaling different time periods in a cycle of slow violence. The installation imagines the Reading Cinemas on Courtenay Place as a future ruin. The cinema complex was built in 2001, but after being deemed earthquake-prone in 2019, it has been closed. Cinema and film itself is an artefact of modernity. A medium, and a space for viewing that medium shaped the modern ego through its ability to walk the audience through dreams. The physical cinema is the threshold between illusion and the modern. The Reading Cinemas exists as a modern ruin in the heart of Te Whanganui a Tara. The building plans of the Reading Cinemas Complex locate several boreholes undertaken in the year 2000. These are all recorded, the materiality of the ground studied for stability. Immersed in the depth of time, ‘Deep In Time’ forms the cinema as distant geology of the future. As if material was pierced out of the ground to be supports of a structure, boreholes become pillars. The layers cast with construction materials, they crumble in the wake of time. The bore-pillars are only a new form to exist as – the cinema changes shape. An illusion of geology, the film along the walls of the installation creates a dream of the future. Layered from the bore-pillars, the film is stretched out to a feature film length, subtly grinding downwards. Walking around, mirrors on the ground shift and alter the view of the space. The closer you are to a reflection, the more of the architecture you see. The space groans and rumbles. The walls push you down, further into the earth. The geology is in the architecture, and the architecture is of geology. Geology has taken the architecture back into its depths. You are surrounded by it. The longer you are within, the more you sink down. The longer you are immersed in the architecture of the earth, the deeper you will fall into time.