Design Myles Quin, Sextant et Plus, 2012;
124pp, unguillotined, five-colour (with spot gold) softcover with die-cut front cover, edition of 366 numbered and signed copies
Made with the inhabitants of La Bricarde, a housing estate in Marseille's infamous Quartiers Nord, Time Machine was a core part of gethan&myles' co-created community project, Time. In this misunderstood and misrepresented neighbourhood where youth employment is close to fifty percent and drug violence is the only story the news cycle wants to tell, everyone is watching and waiting for something, anything, to happen. As days drag endlessly under the Mediterranean sun, then flash by as fear or uncertainty arises, the illusion of regimented days, hours and minutes becomes all too clear. Time is elastic, subjective, fluid.
Time made space (and time) for the inhabitants to express an alternative, less simplistic voice of themselves and their surroundings. The results were Fin, a monolithic sun-dial engraved with 366 (2012 was a leap year) dates of birth of local co-creators, L'arrêt, a short film exploring the moments of tension and fear before a group of local adolescents leapt from the cliffs of the Calanques into the sea far below, and Time Machine…
Conceived as both an exploded group portrait of this misunderstood community and an exploration of the plastic, non-linear nature of time, its blank pages are crossed by an endless line of word: stories and memories of objects, smells, songs, thoughts, images and emotions that disrupt the regular flow of time; the Proustian madeleines of over 300 La Bricarde inhabitants. As well as the sixty pages of these stories, there are sixty pages of
photographs (all with a connection to time and its movement, all taken in and around the estate) concealed within the unguillotined pages. To see them properly the reader has to tear open the pages, breaking the line of text as they do so. A ‘sealed’ book, printed on easily marked, newspaper-like paper stock, it visually records the reader’s journey through it. Instead of numeric folios, progress is indicated by a golden dot that circles around the page like the hands on a
clock, or a planet in orbit. Like all books, Time Machine is exactly what its name suggests: a vehicle for displacing, disrutping and distorting time.
