NEW CIRCADIA
(or Adventures in Mental Spelunking)
An Occupation/Installation, Lecture & Performance Series // Daniels Faculty Gallery, Toronto CA, Fall/Winter 2019-20
THE CAVE
...What do you think caused this dramatic disconnect between psychological time and the clock?
That’s a big question that I’ve been investigating for fourty years. I believe that when you are surrounded by night - the cave was completely dark, with just a light bulb - your memory does not capture the time. You forget. …
Caveman: an Interview with Michael Siffre, Cabinet Magazine Issue 30 Underground Summer 2008
Rotunda Room, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky
The New Circadia transforms the new, 8000 sq. ft. Daniels Gallery into a metaphoric cave. The installation evokes the 1938 Mammoth Cave Experiment - now understood as the first staging of a scientific research laboratory for studying sleep through circadian timekeeping.
Circadian rhythm (L. circa, approximate and L. dies, day) is the natural biological process that recurs on a twenty-four hour cycle. One of the earliest recorded demonstrations of circadian phenomena occurred in 1729 in the description of the movement of a mimosa plants while deprived of sunlight for twenty-four hours. Yet, it was the Mammoth Cave Experiment of 1938, conducted by Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman, that was the first to involve human subjects in the study of circadian rhythm. Setting up camp for thirty-two days in a rock chamber of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, Kleitman’s public experiment set out to test if a human body’s twenty-four hour biological clock could be modified, or if indeed there was an internal body clock that regulated biological processes independent of external stimuli such as light and temperature. Based only on two test subjects, Kleitman and his research assistant, the experiment was ultimately found to be inconclusive. Moreover, later studies of the experiment found it to be scientifically flawed. Yet, if scientific rigor was lacking, the Mammoth Cave Experiment succeeded as a form of popular culture through the choice of Mammoth Cave, the longest known cave system on earth and already a well-traveled tourist site in 1938, and in the extensive publicity the experiment received.
Kleitman’s use of the cave as a laboratory site for conducting a sleep/wake experiment introduced a dramatic narrative aspect through its suggestion of a retreat into the primordial. To descend into a cave is to return to a lithic past, one that evokes the multiple
narratives of hidden underworlds within western and other cultures. Affiliated in ancient times with the seat of oracles, magic, and curative powers, the cave also has a range of cultural as well as historical associations - as a place of sanctuary, seclusion, and ritual. The complement of the cave is the ancient Greek idea of Arcadia - the real but more often imagined setting associated with a pastoral paradise. Thus, the New Circadia offers a hybrid of sorts, a paradisical retreat in the pursuit of circadian reverie.
The Daniel’s subterranean gallery is an ideal setting to showcase a variety of temporal experiences. To use the vocabulary of spelunkers, the gallery visitor passes through three distinct zones associated with a cave.
The Twilight Zone - the initial descent into a cave, where daylight is still visible but no direct sunlight penetrates. Here visitors can stow their clothing and shoes, then take soft geologic forms and other spelunking gear of their choosing for their time in the adjacent Dark Zone.
The Dark Zone - the central sunken portion of the gallery space. Outfitted with a felted floor and lined with large-scale pillow-like forms that reference geological formations such as an overhang and a cove, the Dark Zone, when not in use for a performance, lecture, or an event, allows visitors to recline or perhaps nap amongst the soft geology. Visitors may then “emerge” out of the cave through the Transition Zone.
The Transition Zone - the ramped upper level of the gallery, or, the mouth of the cave. This zone has an ever-changing projection along the northern, eastern and western walls simulating the diurnal and nocturnal sky.
INSTALLATION EVENTS
SYMPOSIUM
New Circadia Symposium, April 2019
Introductory springtime symposium and workshop as precursor to the November installation and events. The John H. Daniel’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design, University of Toronto, April 2019.
Featuring keynote presentations from anthropologist Matthew Wolf-Meyer and scholar Matthew Spellberg, moderated by architect Richard Sommer. The New Circadia Symposium explored the architectural implications of sleep science and culture, and the role of dreams, boredom, distraction, and utopias in shaping the spaces we imagine and make. The symposium served to position the forthcoming exhibition, New Circadia, as the first installation in the Daniels Faculty’s new Architecture and Design Gallery.
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