Chapters
Chronosphere

Chronosphere

December 10th, 2024

Let us envision our planet encased in an envelope. The delivery address on this envelope is marked in black: classified. The sender is a constellation1, X. The contents of the envelope: time.

Humans exist within spaces that are shaped by their presence, which gives these spaces rhythm, form, meaning, size, and continuity. These spaces or spheres, as the original products of human coexistence, require constant renewal.

Eduard Suess introduced the concept of Earth's envelopes as distinct layers or spheres that make up the planet's structure, each with unique characteristics and interactions. Suess interpreted the Biosphere envelope as the global sum of all ecosystems, integrating the interactions between life forms and their environments². Later, Volodymyr Vernadsky introduced the concept of the Noosphere, the "sphere of human thought." Vernadsky’s Noosphere can be seen as the rise of planetary consciousness—a planet as one superorganism integrating all geological, biological, human, and technological activities into a new level of planetary functioning.

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Chronosphere (2024), video installation view; Photography: Istvan Virag / Kunsthall Oslo

In his text from 1921, Volodymyr Vernadsky wrote: “We are now fully living through its prominent entry in the geological history of the planet. The intensive growth of the influence of a single species of living matter—civilized mankind—on the biosphere is observable during the last millennia. The biosphere is transitioning into a new state—into the noosphere—under the influence of scientific thought and human labor”.³Within this planetary framework, another encapsulating layer emerges—the Chronosphere. The Chronosphere represents a sphere where multiscalar temporalities—human and more-than-human, physical and synthetic—interact and reshape one another. This complex interplay forms a chaotic bubble structure of interwoven rhythms and scales—a sphere that profoundly influences the dynamics of life. The Chronosphere establishes a slimy relationship in-flux between individual and planetary, between futures and pasts, intertwined through an overextending present.

In Chronosphere, microtemporalities—the imperceptible ticks of quantum processes, satellite “sensing”, neural synapses, or computational cycles—are as consequential as macrotemporalities, like the geological time of tectonic shifts or the climatic time of ecological cycles; like slow violence caused by war. Temporalities, where the lived rhythms of human societies, serve as a bridge, connecting individual experiences to broader collective patterns, while the yet-to-come intertwine with the speculative, imagined, or forecasted futures that exert their own gravitational pull on the present. The Chronosphere is not only a space of synchronization but also one of memory and anticipation. The past is inscribed within it, manifesting through cultural artifacts, environmental scars, generational trauma and historical inequities.

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Chronosphere (2024), still image from the video

When I try to envision what the "chrono" or temporal aspect encapsulates within this sphere, I realise how constrained I am by the limitations of my human perception of reality—how fragmented and incomplete my experiences are when it comes to understanding the interconnected yet disjointed scales of time.

Zachary Horton, in The Cosmic Zoom: Scale, Knowledge, and Mediation⁴, explores how our attempts to navigate and define scale often expose us to phenomena that challenge our comprehension—ranging from the macro to the micro (like nuclear fission, sea level rise and even computer viruses). Horton describes these encounters, which he terms "trans-scalar," as transformative events where observers accustomed to one scale confront processes operating on a vastly different one. These interactions, he argues, are moments of encountering profound difference, with the potential to either foster new layers of complexity and subjectivity or impose human-centric frameworks onto other scales, echoing patterns of domination.

Powers of Ten, Charles and Ray Eames, 1977 - This 9 minute film offers a glimpse of multiple scales: from the edge of the known universe to the molecules on a person's hand.

In one of chapters of  “The Cosmic Zoom” Horton focuses on  the  relation  between  disciplined  knowledge production and scalar mediation. He writes about  “Powers of Ten” by Charles and Ray Eames and in particular the contribution of physicist Philip Morrison to the film.

“A robust  model  of scale need  not  cater  to  the  perception  of motion  at the temporal  scale of the human  observer - in    other  words,  the temporal  scale of the  cosmic  zoom.  A scalar  model  should  capture  change,  motion,  the event - not    necessarily  calibrated  to the  human  perception  of movement, but to the spatial and temporal  range appropriate  to the entities in question. Representing  the  scalar  other, then,  requires  an  apprehension  beyond  the visual: "It takes  more  knowledge  to convey change.”

The temporal structures of our society span multiple layers of time—in between the macrotemporal scale of futurity, cosmological and geological time; microtemporal levels where information is processed, manipulated, and transmitted; and the everyday temporal rhythms that shape lived experiences. The interplay between these different timeframes forms the complex temporal fabric of politics and culture. The integration of these temporal orders shapes the way we understand and engage with the world around us.

The Chronosphere symbolizes an accelerating layer of our planet, one that is multi scalar and hypersynchronized. Within it, politics and cultures, natural environments and artificial intelligence, and the micro and macro scales of existence are interconnected in time, forming a dynamic and evolving planetary continuum.

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Illustration from the “Anti Zoom” by Bruno Latour, 2014

NEW SPACE

In Paul Virilio's 1977 essay entitled Speed and Politics⁵, the author proposes a concept of dromology—(dromos is Greek for “racetrack”)—the study of technologically produced speed. Virilio explores the relationship between technological acceleration and the transformation of warfare, arguing that speed has become a fundamental factor in shaping military strategy and geopolitics. Virilio also explored how speed in warfare led to the rise of mass media and real-time communication technologies, such as, for example, satellite broadcasts. Paul Virilio emphasizes how the speed of light, recognized as important during the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, led to time dominating space and virtuality overtaking materiality.

The acceleration of warfare technologies has "stitched" the world, effectively collapsing the distinction between distance and immediacy. This is evident in the development of ballistic missiles, drones, cyberwarfare, constellations of satellites, which allow nations to project force globally in Near-real-time (NRT), where Near-real-time refers to data that is updated or made available with minimal delay after an event occurs. These space-based systems function as a colossal mirror, reflecting any place at any time, accessible to those (governments, corporations, etc.) who collaborate for shared visibility and can afford the immediacy. Low-Earth orbit is becoming commercialized as the frontier for a planetary spectacle of simultaneously unfolding scalar narratives.The terrestrial order is transitioning into a virtual one, where the colonization and extraction from physical spaces merges with the continuous extraction of data. This transformation is driven by the rapid growth of the private space industry over the past 15 years, bringing AI-driven observation technologies to a global scale - New Space.

New Space refers to the rapidly growing private space industry that focuses on cost reduction, and accessibility in space exploration and services; on development of space as a commercial market, offering services like satellite deployment, and data extraction.

It is not the first “New Space” revolution in relation to politics of time. In Chronopower: Time and Power in the Context of Modern Temporality⁶, Mykolas Gudelis traces the origins of modern, global, standardized clock time to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This period, known as the “Age of Discovery,” saw the emergence of global consciousness and the re-imagination of time and space, facilitated by European colonialism. The Age of Discovery marked the first large-scale exploration of the globe, seeking unknown lands and sea routes. It was also referred to as a “Space Revolution,” marking the emergence of a new global consciousness, the re-imagination of time and space as the outcome of the discovery of a “New World,” and the conquest of the territories by European empires, extending their power beyond the natural borders of landmasses.

In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference convened in Washington, D.C., with 41 delegates from 25 nations to establish a prime meridian for global navigation and timekeeping. The conference selected the meridian passing through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, as the international standard for 0° longitude, leading to the worldwide adoption of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the basis for standard time zones. The idea of time as a "ready-made temporality" became fundamental to the modern experience of time. This period marked the shift toward economic models that prioritized the accumulation of wealth through trade, territorial acquisition, and the extraction of resources from colonized regions, laying the groundwork for modern capitalist structures. These processes were intertwined with European imperial ambitions.

The invention of the chronometer and the planetary grid map, essential tools for navigation and mapping, coincided with the use of the camera obscura. When miniaturized and made portable, the camera obscura allowed explorers and artists to create precise visual representations of newly discovered landscapes. These images aided in tracing perspectives, defining scales, and making cartographic measurements, contributing to the accuracy of maps during the age of exploration.

This change in perspective allowed for a new approach to vision and its relationship to time, emphasizing not just the external light but how perception itself is grounded in the temporal and physiological limitations of the human body. By the 19th century, the term “progress” came into common vocabulary, particularly through thinkers like Kant, who introduced it as a concept encompassing advancements in science, technology, and societal development.⁷ It became a key term that linked various domains under a single concept. The trajectory of history was no longer seen as cyclical or unchanging but as a progressive movement toward an ever-evolving future in the rapidly synchronizing world.

From the beginning of the 19th century, the science of vision increasingly shifted toward examining the composition of the human subject rather than focusing solely on the mechanics of light and optical transmission. This marked a moment when the visible escaped the timeless, incorporeal framework of the camera obscura and became embedded within another apparatus—the unstable physiology and temporality of the human body.In August 1966, Lunar Orbiter 1 captured the first photograph of Earth from lunar orbit, marking the first time an image of Earth was taken by a non-human. Reacting to such photographs, Martin Heidegger remarked, “I was shocked,” adding, “We do not need atomic bombs at all [to uproot us]—the uprooting of man is already here. All our relationships have become merely technical ones. It is no longer upon an earth that man lives today.” Heidegger associated these images with atomic warfare, cybernetics, and planetary technics, suggesting they symbolize the destructive power of modern technology.⁸

Over the past century, the concept of "global" has transformed and evolved, reflecting shifts in how we synchronize with the world. Developments in nuclear politics, the proposed Anthropocene epoch and the advancements in media connectivity have redefined the global as encompassing the entire Earth system, expanding into the territory around the Earth. Our planet orbits are now crowded with thousands of satellites, yet there remain no comprehensive or functional international regulations governing the quantity or ownership of satellites occupying this space. These satellite constellations extract data from planetary surfaces and transmit it via satellite internet in near-real time, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated global oversight of this rapidly expanding frontier.

THE WAR IN UKRAINE

The war in Ukraine has significantly catalyzed AI-driven technologies and their implications on the politics of time—or chronopolitics.  The war in Ukraine has been described as the first commercial space war, software-defined AI war, drone war, and nuclear cyberwar. For example, John John R. Allen and Amir Husain have termed it “hyperwar,” driven by AI with minimal human intervention, while Robert Work describes it as “algorithmic warfare,” where autonomous systems act based on context. Kai-Fu Lee calls AI weaponry the “third revolution in warfare” after gunpowder and nuclear weapons, seeing Ukraine as a testing ground and laboratory for future AI warfare.

AI and satellite constellations are integral to geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), enhancing capabilities in data processing, target recognition, and open-source data analysis. AI-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are extensively utilized for reconnaissance, delivering real-time information on troop movements and military assets, thereby facilitating informed tactical decisions. Neural networks process imagery from ground-level, drone, and satellite sources to augment intelligence and monitor adversary forces. AI also plays a crucial role in cyber warfare, encryption, and electronic warfare.

Satellite internet allows for real-time communication between units, rapid dissemination of intelligence, and coordination of complex maneuvers. The low latency and high bandwidth provided by services like Starlink have been particularly crucial. For instance, the Ukrainian unit Aerorozvidka has utilized drones in conjunction with Starlink terminals to conduct operations against Russian forces.The war has boosted the commercial satellite technologies, with agencies like Maxar, Capella Space, Planet Labs, and BlackSky providing high-resolution imagery and near-real-time intelligence. The full-scale invasion served as a proving ground for these companies, demonstrating their ability to deliver timely data to inform military strategies and media coverage. Their constellations function like a living organism. Instead of merely seeing our planet, they sense it through time.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery is a remote sensing technology produced from low Earth orbit. It operates by transmitting signals to the surface and receiving their reflections.

Images are not only visual representations but time-based compositions of technological durations. SAR measures the time it takes for signals to travel to the surface and return (echo time), determined by the distance and the constant speed of light. SAR data constructed by interpreting signal durations and intensities over time. In this sense, time becomes a compositional element and a tool for spatial quantification, converting temporal data into precise geospatial measurements.

SAR operates at scales and speeds beyond human sensory perception, requiring algorithms to decode what the human eye cannot see. Unlike optical systems, SAR works at night and can penetrate clouds, smoke, vegetation, snow, and sand. It provides data on direction, speed, distance, soil moisture, motion, temperatures, wind velocity, deforestation, oil spills, and more. It can detect the material of objects, distinguish their design and nature. In this sense, time is an abstraction, transcending ordinary human experience and becoming a dimension that technology manipulates to create meaning.

One of Ukraine's defence tools in the on-going war is the "People's Satellite," funded by public donations. Raised by the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation in 2022, the satellite from the Finnish constellation ICEYE has quickly proved its worth, capturing 4,173 images by mid-2024 and identifying 2,600 Russian military assets in 150 locations.The satellite supports Ukraine's Defense Ministry with full access to its data, helping monitor Russian troop deployments, logistics, and infrastructure. Its advanced imaging capabilities enable precise targeting, tracking troop movements, and assessing post-strike damage, significantly enhancing Ukraine's strategic and tactical operations.

ICEYE played a key role in the September 13, 2023, attack on Sevastopol Bay, aiding in the destruction of the Russian landing ship Minsk and submarine Rostov-on-Don. SAR imagery has also been vital in uncovering air defense systems, radar installations, and strategic targets like the Crimean Bridge.

Several private space agencies are using social media to promote their progressive developments in being closer and closer to the Real Time and sensing the planet throughout and within. Satellite imagery could keep focused on a requested location for over 50 seconds, with original images spanning 25–500 km, far beyond human visual comprehension. Satellite constellations simultaneously detect micro and macro changes above, on, and below the ground—tracking glacier melt, atmospheric shifts, material compositions, and human movements. These observations draw on past data, recognize current patterns, and anticipate future possibilities, capturing and framing planetary changes.

In 2018, I encountered Abelardo Gil-Fournier's project “Landscape Prediction: An Earthology of Moving Landforms”, part of his research with Jussi Parikka and the Archaeologies of Media and Technology group. Gil-Fournier describes how imaging projects, marketed as environmental intelligence or real-time Earth observation, commodify planetary surfaces as video streams. Processed by computer vision and machine learning, these systems transform geospatial data into the surface of the image and further - into future predictive tools. He writes:

“As aerial images become data, then, the Earth is operationalised as a legible screen, where the predicted predates the perceived.”

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Landscape Prediction: An Earthology of Moving Landforms, Abelardo Gil-Fournier

TACHYON

Near-real-time data, as one of the aspects of the Chronosphere, exemplifies the temporal dimension of this envelope of our planet. It could be also used in predictive technologies, like, for example, predictive imaging.

Predictive imaging refers to the use of computational techniques, often powered by AI and machine learning, to generate visual representations of future events or scenarios. It generates “Future frames” or “Next-frames”  - sequences of photographic images of a moment that hasn't happened yet.

Unlike traditional photography, which captures representations of moments that exist in the past and present, predictive imaging seeks to depict what might happen in the Near-Future based on data, patterns, and probabilities.

Instead of being tethered to the past, these images exist in a speculative future, constructing visual narratives of events yet to unfold. This shift transforms the image from an artifact of documentation to a tool for exploration and foresight.

The moment becomes fluid. It is no longer connected to human cognitive understanding of a present tense. If photographs traditionally “freeze” time, predictive images “extend” time, layering possible outcomes onto the present. They invite new interpretations of how we engage with temporality: as a linear progression, a set of probabilities, or even a malleable construct shaped by algorithms. Predicted images are speculative; they exist in a temporal liminality, blending computation, probability, and representation. Its "nature" becomes less about documentation and more about anticipation and foresight.

How do we rethink photographic, frozen moment within such a development? Does a predicted frame represent reality, or is it merely a model of what reality might become? Where do we even start to question what is a moment, what is documentation of a moment, and most importantly, what is the role of a human experience in it? And how the answers to these questions would change if we would remove the presence of a human observer?

Predictive imaging documents a "moment" that is statistically likely rather than witnessed. Predictive imaging often operates independently of human observation, driven and processed by algorithms and artificial intelligence. But who owns the rights to a future that hasn't yet happened? The algorithm that processed/experienced that future moment? The individual or group whose data trained it? The user of the system who has access to it? The corporation who requested the future to become knowable?

Excerpt from the “The Rhythm Is Set by the World” (1971), dir.R.Sergiyenko, Kyiv Science Film / The State Archival Service of Ukraine

While working on the video project for the Munch Museum Triennale “The Machine is Us”, I encountered the concept of tachyons from quantum mechanics—hypothetical particles that travel faster than light. The existence of such particles would challenge conventional notions of time and causality, potentially allowing for backward time travel. While tachyons remain theoretical, they inspire a reimagining of time and causality, much like predictive technologies that use data to anticipate and shape future events.

As part of the project, I proposed the speculative concept of “Tachyonic Data”⁹—predicted information derived from pattern recognition and its representation. It serves as documentation of a future event, blending information from both the retrospective past and a prospective future timeframe. Tachyonic data emerges from AI-driven nowcasting, where an event is documented before it occurs in the human realm. In this realm, humans are too slow to keep pace with the synthetic present, which effectively becomes our future. In this version of the future, certain events have already transpired, and what we receive is merely their documentation—Tachyonic Data.

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“Tachyoness”, installation view, Munch Museum, 2022

Instead of past-present-future we are witnessing a shift to past-future-present: past is being analyzed into a speculative future scenario, which plays a crucial role in decision-making processes in the present time.

The use of images for predicting future events can be traced back to the advent of photography. In the 1840s, Belgian authorities began developing an archival system to organize visual data on individual prisoner profiles, aiming to predict criminal behavior based on physiognomy. Francis Galton, associated with eugenics, developed photographic composites to identify "types" of individuals, blending statistics and imagery to define social and physical ideals, such as Adolphe Quetelet’s concept of the "Average Man." These photographic composites resemble today's pattern recognition systems deployed alongside facial recognition technology. Currently, live facial recognition technology is adopted to identify suspects in real-time, significantly improving crime detection rates. For example, the Metropolitan Police in London reported that this technology has led to an arrest every two hours. Additionally, tools like PredPol and HunchLab analyze crime data to predict when and where crimes might occur.

In the post-9/11 biopolitics of securitization, premediation works simultaneously to foster and to fulfill the anticipation of security. Terror and code, that connect numbers and time, took over the social relationship. Richard Grusin mentions that after 9/11 there was a shift in televisual and networked news media from a focus on the immediacy of the present and recent past—to a focus on the premediation of the future.¹⁰ Immediacy is less about the liveness of real-time than about the liveness of futurity. And this futurity is often mediated by management of risk.

While people live in constant fear of the next moment, trapped in the liminal space of “not knowing when” terror, war, or colonial violence will end (this uncertainty feels like a disorienting, slimy experience of limbo), technological advancements continue to refine predictive analytics. These systems reconfigure uncertainty, enabling the forecasting of potential risks and financial losses across various domains, including e-commerce, national security, and financial markets.

In 1922, Lewis Fry Richardson published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, outlining a method for computing atmospheric changes—an algorithm for systematic numerical weather prediction. This approach is still used today, not only for forecasting weather but also for predicting, preempting, and preventing future uncertainties across various fields.

Technologies influence our sense of time and constitute new arrangements for it. In effect, they produce new formal and experiential temporalities. Yuk Hui explores the novel form of futurity emerging with the advent of predictive technologies. He suggests that a new temporal experience is coming into being, which he terms "tertiary protention."¹¹ Hui examines the interplay between memory and expectation in the digital age. He suggests that digital archives not only store past information but also influence our projections of the future, thereby affecting our temporal experience. This is a future that does not arise from one’s own anticipation but is instead shaped by an external, socially and technologically constructed projection, particularly through artificial intelligence. Hui connects this to advancements in digital technologies, such as big data, machine learning, and AI, which work by discovering patterns and making predictions. These technologies operate at speeds and scales beyond human comprehension. Processes behind predictions become hidden from the user, so the future is no longer a purely contingent or unpredictable domain but one increasingly shaped by algorithmic systems.

SLOW AND INVISIBLE

Slowness could also be used as a weapon. Rob Nixon refers to damaging processes that have been kept out of sight by assigning them to other scales as "slow violence."¹² The damage is done to environments, humans, and communities, but it is "of indifferent interest to the sensation-driven technologies of our image-world," which require that events be concentrated in space and time to become visible as such. Slow violence is not accidental; it is the result of weaponized scalar difference.

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InSAR image of melting glaciers (Spitsbergen, Svalbard), collaboration with the Oslo University, Department of Geosciences: Andreas Kääb & Thomas Schellenberger/Copernicus Sentinel-1 data / ESA

Last year, I worked on the video installation Sensing the Near Real Time for the Henie Onstad Triennale New Visions, where I explored the intersections between human, technological, and geological timescales, as well as the role of remote sensing in planetary observation. One of the images featured in the work was generated by a researcher using InSAR imagery to examine how the ground around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant shifted over the course of a year during Russian occupation. In this case, the InSAR image captured a one-year displacement of the ground.

If previously mentioned SAR imagery is technology that uses micro, super-fast time to “capture,” InSAR imagery could represent many years as a single image.

InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) is a remote sensing technology that measures and maps ground surface changes. Techniques like InSAR analyze the phase differences between radar signals captured at different times to detect minute changes in the Earth's surface. In InSAR, time becomes a medium for understanding dynamic processes, a medium of change detection over temporal scales, revealing temporal changes in the environment. In InSAR, time is not just a measure—it is the essence of how space, movement, and change are represented and understood.

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Sensing The Near Real Time, Digital screens, stainless steel, simulated nuclear waste glass, soil. Installation photography: Øystein Thorvaldsen/Henie Onstad Kunstsenter

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SAR Satellite Observation of Nuclear Risks in Zaporizhzhya”, Gabriela Quintana Sánchez, Groundstation.SPACE

On March 4, 2022 Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe's largest nuclear facility. This act of nuclear terrorism led to a fire at the plant. CCTV footage from the territory of the plant was widely live streamed, where viewers were watching the unfolding attack and speculating on potential consequences. Authorities have warned that the disaster could equal 10 Chernobyls. Chernobyl as a historical event becomes a unit for measuring the scale of a future event.

As Svitlana Matviyenko noted, the apocalyptic future temporality permanently invades the present¹³. This future temporality of a possible nuclear catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is part of every single image of the plant from the moment Russians occupied it. The temporality of this future disaster is so far-reaching for human imagination that the time measurement of this scale sometimes is not enough.

We live in constant fear of disasters, a temporality beyond human comprehension. For example, the consequences of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam have been described in the media as "an ecocide that will have far-reaching impacts into the future," where "parts of nature are lost forever." Today, natural resources and ecosystems are being deliberately destroyed, resulting in enduring environmental damage that affects communities for generations. And this unperceivable on its scale to humans, longer than human trauma becomes a weapon by itself.

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A satellite image of the bottom of Kakhovka reservoir, now covered with newly grown willow forests. I have obtained this image with the Sentinel-2 L2A satellite’s imager, which detects light reflected by vegetation.

In “Pollution as a Weapon of War,” Svitlana Matviyenko examines the layered impacts of war on ecosystems, focusing on both immediate and gradual forms of destruction. She highlights the severe damage to soil fertility and the presence of undetonated shells, which create long-term ecological risks and contribute to the “complex temporality of ecocidal trauma.” Drawing on the concept of “slow violence” by Thom Davies and Achille Mbembe’s “necropolitics,” Matviyenko situates pollution as a tool of war that operates at multiple speeds. While fast violence from explosions and toxic releases is immediate and visible, slow violence unfolds “gradually and out of sight,” such as soil contamination and the long-term poisoning of environments. Multiple speeds and forms of violence shape the chaotic and incomprehensible reality of war, producing what Mbembe calls “death-worlds,” where populations endure terrible conditions that reduce life to a state of mere survival.

Svitlana Matviyenko writes: “Paradoxically, extreme cases of fast violence in war may also be made ‘invisible,’ but by their overwhelming number and their capacity to produce shock and trauma: witnesses of war and war crimes often report that their memories collapse days of violence into one undifferentiated continuity. Together, cases of fast and slow violence compose the chaotic reality of war, whose production of necropolitical ‘death-worlds’ does not lend itself to easy comprehension.”

MEMORY, ANTICIPATION, AND COEXISTENCE

The synchronization of the technological mediation of scales and rhythms coexisting with us on the planet is a large part of what is forming a Chronosphere today. The Chronosphere can be envisioned as another accelerating envelope of our planet—a sphere of life where human and more-than-human temporalities play a role in shaping both our perception and the physical reality of Earth. It encompasses past histories already written, premeditated futures imagined through images or statistics, and the immeasurable legacies of colonial struggle, and environmental violence.

Within this sphere, politics, cultures, nature and artificial intelligence; the interwoven rhythms of existence are interconnected in time, reflecting the complex interplay of durationalities and temporal forces shaping our world. In this planetary setting times become equal protagonists¹⁴ of our story.

The agency of time as an infrastructure is distributed across human and non-human actors, blurring boundaries between the organic and the synthetic. AI systems, weather patterns, financial markets, and even microbial ecologies become active participants in the Chronosphere, influencing its rhythms and responding to its flux. This distributed agency raises critical questions: Who decides the rhythm of our collective existence? How do we ensure equity in a system where temporalities are unevenly distributed and mediated by power structures?

As we try to continue to map and navigate the Chronosphere, we are challenged to rethink our relationship with time—not as a linear stream we pass through, but as a multidimensional envelope we inhabit and influence. The Chronosphere, existing both as a speculative framework and a tangible reality, invites us to view time as a collective and dynamic environment shaped by the choices we make in crafting the world we share.

Chronosphere, excerpt from the video, 2024

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Lesia Vasylchenko is a Ukrainian artist currently based in Norway. She works across a range of media, including video, photography, installation, and curatorial. Vasylchenko explores encounters between visual cultures, media technologies, and chronopolitics. She is the founder of STRUKTURA.Time, a cross-disciplinary initiative for research and practice within the framework of visual arts, media archaeology, literature, and philosophy. She holds degrees in Journalism from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and in Fine Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Vasylchenko is the recipient of the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Prize (2023) and is currently nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2025). Her work is part of the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA / Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki.

Notes:

  1. A space satellite constellation is a group of satellites that work together in a coordinated way to provide continuous coverage or specific functionality over a large area, often the entire globe. For example, the “Aquila” constellation, a network of national and commercial surveillance satellites established by NATO’s "Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space" (APSS). Launched on February 15, 2023, with 18 Allied nations, this initiative aims to transform data gathering and usage in the Alliance, enhancing decision-making processes in response to events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This has emphasized the need for comprehensive surveillance across all domains—land, air, and sea. Both surveillance and reconnaissance include visual observation (from soldiers on the ground) and electronic observation (for example from satellites, unmanned aircraft systems, ground sensors and maritime vessels), which are then analysed, turning information into intelligence.
  2. Eduard Suess introduced the concept of Earth's distinct envelopes, or "spheres," in his work, Das Antlitz der Erde (The Face of the Earth), published between 1883 and 1909. In his geological framework, the envelopes refer to the lithosphere (solid Earth), hydrosphere (water), atmosphere (air), and the biosphere (life).
  3. Vernadskiĭ, V. I. Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon. Nongovernmental Ecological V.I. Vernadsky Foundation, 1997.
  4. Horton, Zachary K. The Cosmic Zoom : Scale, Knowledge, and Mediation. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
  5. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics : An Essay on Dromology. [2006 edition], Semiotext(e), 2006.
  6. Time and Power in the context of modern temporality is adissertation work by Mykolas Gudelis, The New School for Social Research. In this project Gudelis problematizes the notion of time as a specifically political category by exploring the relationship between time and power situating this relationship in the historical, sociopolitical context of late Western capitalist modernity.
  7. Allenby, Amy. The End of Progress Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Columbia University Press, 2015.
  8. Caygill, Howard. “Heidegger and the Automatic Earth Image.” Philosophy Today, vol.65, no. 2, 2021, pp. 325–38
  9. Lesia Vasylchenko, et al. Chimeras: Inventory of Synthetic Cognition. Onassis Foundation, 2022.
  10. Grusin, Richard. Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11; Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
  11. Hui, Yuk. Archives of the Future : Remarks on the Concept of Tertiary Protention. Inscription. editor / Karl-Magnus Johansson. Göteborg : Riksarkivet Landsarkivet i Göteborg, 2018. pp. 129-155 (Arkiv i Väst; 20).
  12. Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press, 2011.
  13. Svitlana Matvienko, et al. E-Flux Journal #126. e-flux, 2022.
  14. “How do the conditions of contemporary planetary crisis shape the genres of temporal experience that make up the present? What happens when the “background” to our world-building—the temporalities we took for granted—assert themselves as protagonists, as they do in the Anthropocene?” - Zhang, Gary Zhexi. Catastrophe Time! Strange Attractor, 2023, https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=30269329.
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