In their respective academic, artistic and everyday practices, all of these thinkers deploy creative acts to deal with problems of temporality. In their quest to unravel, master, respect or multiply the mysteries of time, they explore the interstices between arts, media and various academic disciplines. I will argue that these excursions have, either intentionally or accidentally, led to new ways of conceptualizing time. Case studies that I develop in this study range from Gilles Deleuze’s ‘time-image’ to grasp cinema’s unique mode of temporality to Marvin Gaye’s experiments with multi-track recording technology to recover lost times.

Inspired by these non-conventional approaches, Time Tracks exploits the potential of an experimental layout to open up the philosophical problem of time. The book juxtaposes the main argument, set in the body of the page, with small, additional texts in the margins. This spatial separation enables conversations between arts, media, and disciplines. Time Tracks thereby both theoretically argues and visually shows that philosophical problems are not the prerogative of a certain academic practice but transgress the boundaries between theory, literature, music, and life.

Synopsis

Time Tracks starts from the media-theoretical insight that philosophy persistently omits a crucial factor in its analyses, namely the material structure of the texts that it consumes and produces. This book compensates for this negligence by pointing out that the technical medium has – and has had – a decisive impact on its content. This argument applies to theories on time in particular. Since temporality is never experienced directly but always through a medium in the broadest sense of the word – ranging from the sun dial and the human body to the computer – this concept cannot possibly be studied separately from that of mediality.

If there is no time without a medium and vice versa, then the contemporary multi-medial landscape is inevitably also a multi-temporal one. Time Tracks proposes a temporal pluralism. Its central thesis holds that time should be conceived as a multiplicity. I introduce the concept of time track to designate the individual temporal manifestations that make up this multiplicity. I will argue that there is no single concept of time that is eternally and universally valid, but multiple time tracks that maintain a complex reciprocal relation to the medium in which they are expressed. Each medial expression is inextricably linked to a unique constellation of time tracks. Problems of temporality can therefore not be solved if one stays within the straitjacket of textuality; they demand an active exploration of the expressive modalities of different media.

Time Tracks is a mediator of time as much as it is a meditation on time. The book both proposes and performs an experimental use of technical media in philosophy. In an attempt to erode the linearity of the text, theoretical, literary, musical, and biographical excursions appear in the margins of the page. The theoretical function of these side texts constantly shifts throughout the dissertation. Their function depends on the conceptual and medial context in which they appear. Sometimes, they support, complement or criticize the main argument. At others, they contain biographical anecdotes, fictional narratives and other background stories. In all cases, however, the excursions in the margins interrupt the habitual attitude that the reader has developed towards books of philosophy.

In the fall of 2008, he was a visiting professor at the English Department of the University of Minnesota.

In 2007 and 2008, Jan Hein was affiliated to the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht as a postdoctoral researcher, where he worked on a project called Intellectual Image.

Before, he wrote his dissertation Time Tracks at the department of Philosophy of the University of Utrecht, and Media Theory and Cultural Studies at the Humboldt-University in Berlin.

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Jan Hein has published on Prince, Marvin Gaye, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Kittler, Ralph Ellison, Michel Foucault, and the Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

He is currently working on a research project called Medial Operations and a website with the same title, as well as co-editing a volume called Pluralizing Rhythm.