TIME LAPSE

GAMZE KONCA
ISTANBUL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY, TURKEY

Abstract
Space is the place where time occurs.
Time has an expiring effect on space. Everything falls apart over time, into past, present and future.
Time passes over ‘now’ and expires city+architecture. Despite time, the cinematic memory holds every
‘now’ of the city and crystalizes time fragments in film time.
Cinema as a visual art includes movement and time which allows recording the process, time,
transformation and layers of an event in the film space. Expiration of city, architecture and urban
lifetime can be witnessed through film. Cinema can participate in the process of cities by recording a
film as a storage space and a mechanical memory as an extension of mind and experience of city and
architecture.
Time falls apart into fragments at every encounter between architecture and time. In the city, time is
faster because of the events and movement take place densely. So, urban architecture becomes
expired, effected by time lapse further more.
The main question is how to save the time, collect the time, experiences of architecture and process of
cities/how to move the memory into a timeless space.
How can architecture of city be saved in a collective memory? Is it possible to define time through
space and emancipate city & architecture from time lapse?
Cinema occurs in this point as an emancipator of architecture from time lapse, through moving images
as memory and storage space out of time. According to Bergson, it is not possible to reach ‘now’,
because once it is realized, ‘now’ transforms into past. On the other hand Deleuze reaches to ‘pure
now’ in film time where past, future and present crystallize and become timeless [de-timed]. The
cinematic memory holds every ‘now’ of the city and crystallizes time fragments in film time.
Thus, filming may bring a new path to emancipate architecture from time lapse by bringing “pure now”
into cinema’s “crystal of time”.

Keywords:
Architecture, Cinema, Time, Duration, Space

Introduction

Time, beyond losing the magic of mysterious veil of duration: kneads the world in front of our eyes,
with the magic of the time and space. These two spells settled between architecture, city and cinema;
fly the mind into the grip of a fantastical consciousness. The center point of this paper is to connect
architecture and cinema through time and existence.
In archaic, antic, romantic architecture and cities; altars, temples, roads; city plans and designs were
constructed for visioning and visualizing the glory, the birth and the life. These cities seem to be
“standing still”, over time, symbolizes the timeless, static existence and eternity: The eternity which all
of the art works would desire to reach that timeless point. [Because it is impossible to the main
meaning and reality of time, there will be no possibility to reach an endless state of time. Eternity
becomes a myth beyond time, life and existence.]
Cities as products of an implicit thinking and art in a symbolic texture, when began to lose their human
scale limits, then the will of eternity drowned into the time lapse, the loss of existence beyond time,
pushed the human being to search for new ways to reach that desirable peak of time. First
photography became a new media to hide the life inside a frame. But there were only images as
memories, not the experience and the story. At that point cinema has appeared as a new way of
mechanical art. Following the Hegel’s order, cinema as the seventh art; became the art of experience,
time and beyond: including any art form inside and allowing them to express any idea. Cinema
became a new utopia.
Henceforth, looking through a lens of architecture, cinema can help the architecture and cities to allow
them creating a new way of emancipation of existence, to flow behind time. Cinema becomes the
sound of the mute cities and movement of the still architecture; opens a space where architecture can
move through new motion eyes of camera obscura. Then it brings architecture and cities into a new
place where the existence is not just a myth, a realm far from an unspecified time, a place of utopia; it
is something that is happening "now and here; here right now”.
In this sense, unity of architecture+city and cinema in their development starts to occur, not only
visually, but also in formal and technical sense; also spiritual, and semantic, rather touching to one
another than penetrating into each other.
In this context, working within architecture and cinema, investigated under the presence of
understanding and conceiving the time-lapse, planes of existence and to find an exit point to the
resolution of existence; making the time invisible and deconstructive.
In the guidance of the main question of time lapse, cinema will be discussed as the visualizing path of
the city architecture, which is about to lose the lifetime experiences and meaningful existence. In this
context, the relation between time and movement and also between time and space will be observed
in depth. The cinema will be discussed how it visualizes the existence, rather than anatomical and
physical, more in terms of view and stance.
Within the scope of all investigations around urban architecture and cinema, main approaches in
between, in the absence of time, and convergence of city and cinema is examined. Being exposed to
the changing and developing life conditions, even to the perception of time and space, cinema can be
accepted as a new hero, the messenger, the conqueror of time and a state of welcoming dreams of
utopia around the city and architecture.
All around a circle of architectural square, as a physical body of existential space of the city, time is
running all around fast and inexorably, cinema stops the motion in moving state, eternally loop over a
‘Samsāra’ (Samsāra 2013).
Image 1–Samsāra directed by Ron Fricke.

TIME

[‘Future’ is a replacement, ‘Now’ is a time-lapse]

Time as a mysterious concern of physics, myth of the philosophy and a marring element (battling
partner) of art, is the main identifier karma of life. In one hand time adds value to the art works on the
other hand deteriorate as a rule of nature.
Time itself is a matter to observe, but on the other side, it is the power, which transforms everything. In
physics it is accepted to be the fourth dimension on the earth. Bergson says, “No two moments are
identical in a conscious being” “pure duration excludes all idea of juxtaposition, reciprocal exteriority
and extension” (Bergson 1992, 164).
Einstein made a point on time, which demonstrates that the time itself can be relative. The relativity of
time represents itself in the notion of Bergson on Creative Mind writings. According to Bergson this
relativity could be true because time has two faces. First side is ‘Abstract/General Time’: Which is
percepted in the outer, actual world. Outer time is measured by clock. The clock clears this feature of
time as a countable version. This time can be called as external time, which is percepted through the
world around us. The second side of the time is ‘duration’ [la durée] which is percepted personally.
This can be called as an inner time perception through experiences. Internal perception of time is
duration. By Einstein’s relativity notion, the internal time, duration can be more comprehensible.

There is no longer a universal time, which can be applied without ambiguity to any part of the universe; there are
only the various ‘proper’ times of the various bodies in the universe, which agree approximately for two bodies,
which are not in rapid motion, but never agree exactly except for two bodies, which are at rest relatively to each
other (Russell 2002, 47).

The relative comprehension of time creates duration, as Russell explains Einstein’s theory of relativity,
general time cannot be possibly verified through any calculation, which measures time in a considered
concept of universality. Then the calculated/considered general time becomes abstract time that
Bergson asserts in his essay on Idea and Duration.
At that point Bergson explains the difference between abstract time and duration putting is point on
that Time in Bergson’s description is a liberated form of mind synthesis. Time is purified from space
and it is liberated from all limits of the space. The liberation of time from space does not mean the
elimination of space it is an acceptance of a free relation in between two dimensions because time
becomes represented into space instead of depending on it. Even relations make the main
understanding and provide the substance of the issue; it is needed to look closer in a free space to
conceive the conception. Bergson seems to apply this synthesis to reach his fundamental conception
on time. According to Bergson ‘time is projected into space’ (Bergson 1992, 125) which can be
understood that time to be perceptible, comprehensible and even more so to be countable needs a
ground to demonstrate itself.
Time, when liberated from space an event, a movement cannot be counted in measures. As Bergson
claims that time is projected into space (Bergson 1992, 125), the scale of time is measured through
space. Deleuze inserts a new point that time is the scale of movement (Deleuze 2012, xi). The
geometric, arithmetic, algebraic, physical time can only be measured through space, which is defined
by directions. This is the abstraction of time. But what if time and space are sieved and split into
different directions on mind being irrelevant; separated and resolved, how can time be conceived? In
that point the immanent time the ‘duration’ [duréé] appears in mind. Duration is bounded with
perception and experience but it is also decomposed of space.
Duration as emancipated time, in Bergson’s assertion becomes an inner voyage, which is a flow of
mind. It happens in a conscious mind; it is dynamic, cyclic and never ending movement. This flow
needs no space because duration itself creates its own inner space through the flowing movements
then becomes infinite. This virtual perception of time is experienced different from actual world.
Bergson in Creative Mind, while making his point about time, he walks through another notion ‘reality’.
Reality is a prospect area to opens a window to look into time. From this point the inner duration and
the external measurable time, would be accepted as different realities. The physical world, material
world; arithmetic world and countable-observable reality is the place where time occurs. This reality is
depicted as/by quantitative spatial world. On the other side of general time, Duration proposes a new
phenomenal reality, an inner understanding, a cognitive mind, psychological fact, which waves in a
sentimental world. The inner phenomenal reality is defined as/by a qualitative active, dramatic, event
based world.
Deleuze explains difference of virtual and actual. Actual reality is images of matter, general time and
events surrounding the bodies in the space while the virtual reality is inner perception, dreamlike
experiences free from chronological time, cyclic and imagination of creative mind.
Deleuze contributes this idea as an exemplification of mirror: actual world becomes a reflection on
virtual world. And virtual world, can be said through cinema, doubles its being and becomes
coalescence. In this double image of virtual and actual, cinema crystallizes the time, the reality, the
perception and experience. The coalescence of the actual image and the virtual image, the image with
two sides, actual and virtual at the same time comes to be realized.
…actual image itself has a virtual image, which corresponds to it like a double or a reflection. In Bergsonian
terms, the real object is reflected in a mirror-image as in the virtual object, which from its side and simultaneously,
envelops or reflects the real: there is 'coalescence' between the two. There is a formation of an image with two
sides, actual and virtual. It is as if an image in a mirror, a photo or a postcard came to life, assumed
independence and passed into the actual, even if this meant that the actual image returned into the mirror and
resumed its place in the postcard or photo, following a double movement of liberation and capture (Deleuze 2012,
68)

Here Deleuze does not separate actual and virtual, instead he distributes the relation in between:

The crystal image, or crystalline description, has two definite sides, which are not to be confused. For the
confusion of the real and the imaginary is a simple error of fact, and does not affect their discernibility: the
confusion is produced solely 'in someone's head'. But indiscernibility constitutes an objective illusion; it does not
suppress the distinction between the two sides, but makes it unattributable, each side taking the other's role in a
relation, which we must describe as reciprocal presupposition, or reversibility (Deleuze 2012, 69).

The relation between actual and virtual, external and internal and finally the general time and duration
is refracted into the space. At this interval, the external reality, which occurs in quantitative time can be
imagined as photographic pictures in a film, which can be taken in frames, specific pictures. As the
quantitative time includes units of time, order of events and chronological perception; the relation of
movement, event and time is framed like photographic images. On the other hand inner reality/world of
duration can be described as the flow of the film, which is percepted as non-stop movements and
transition of events. The qualitative approach to duration exposes the cyclic relation of time, movement
and events, which is a talent of cinematographic montage. In the films of Resnais it is easily expressed
through a dreamlike bounces. In Hiroshima Mon Amour (Hiroshima Mon amour 1959) duration, inner
perception, and intrinsic experiences are expressed as a new reality by deconstructed sequences of
time and events. Then this ability of cinema makes de-timing possible.

Image 2–Hiroshima Mon Amour directed by Alain Resnais.

The de-timing becomes a deconstruction of time, memory and experiences. Duration becomes an
immanence memory. Through Bergson’s argument on time and duration, which collects many
concepts including memory, it can be filtered that memory makes duration possible. ‘If consciousness
is aware of anything more than positions, the reason is that it keeps the successive positions in mind
and synthesizes them’ (Bergson 1910, 111).
Giving an example of movements of a pendulum, he explains the movement of mind creating memory.
‘Owing to the fact that our consciousness has organized them as a whole in memory, they are first
preserved and afterwards disposed in a series: in a word, we create for them a fourth dimension of
space, which we call homogeneous time’ (Bergson 1910, 109).
From Bergson’s explanations of time and memory; this would be accepted as the flow of time occurs
through memory. The external time is measured depending on the action of cutting time into
fragments, which stops the flow of whole. Conversely in duration, memory lets inner perception of time
flow through mind. Then the ordered fragments unify into wholeness.
Finally on Bergson it can be said that he explains/argues time through space. The concepts of
duration and external time produce inside and outside places, draw a boundary in between and frame
the differences. A place needs a frame to be and the frame creates an inside and an outside space.
Therefore Bergson’s understanding of time can be said that explains time through space/place.
Architecture becomes a mean to conceive time.
Deleuze in his notion on time-image explains that for over centuries time has been the measurement
of movement (Deleuze 2012, xi). Even through the new paradoxical movements of time and new
perception release the subordination of time is reversed. The focus point for us to think about the
relation of time and space is that time and movement needs a space. Sequences and ordered or
paradoxical movement with the choreography of uncountable stops and poses creates a place, a
framed architecture. So every ‘body’ has its own architecture of space, city of the place. Movement of
time, being in time, shows a scale/a reference point and a determined area.
On other side Heidegger in his argument on time and being, he follows time through events. According
to Heidegger time is a whole past/present/future are not like fragments, they are states of time.
Heidegger in his lecture of ‘The Concept of Time’ comes with the idea of Einstein and Aristotle,
bounding them in a relation between time and space.

Some of Einstein’s relativity propositions are as follows: ‘Space is nothing in itself; there is no absolute space. It
exists merely by way of the bodies and energies contained in it. (an old proposition of Aristotle’s) Time too is
nothing. It persists merely as a consequence of the events taking place in it… Time is what within which events
takes place. (Heidegger 2005, 3E)

Addition to the assertion of Heidegger, Bernard Tschumi, architect and architectural theorist claims his
point on space by time. Time and event becomes the most important elements of a space. “By order of
experience, one speaks of time, of chronology, of repetition. But some architects are suspicious of
time and would wish their buildings to be read at a glance, like billboards. (Tschumi 2009, 161). The
architectural experience, which is mainly surrounded by the perception of space and time creates the
event also contrarily the event creates the perception of space and time. “The final meaning of any
sequence is dependent on the relation Space/Event/Movement. By extension, the meaning of any
architectural situation depends on the relation SEM. The composite sequence SEM breaks the
linearity of the elementary sequence, whether S, E or M. (Tschumi 2009, 163)
Events creating experiences and created by the experience brings into mind the exclamation of
Deleuze about actual and virtual, which includes a mirror image. Tschumi at that point contributes this
thought “But architectural sequences do not mean only the reality of actual buildings, or the symbolic
reality of their fictions. An implied narrative is always there, whether of method, use, or form. It
combines the presentation of an event ( or chain of events) with its progressive spatial interpretation
(which of course alters it). (Tschumi 2009, 163). Then conspicuous ideas of Tschumi reaches to the
cinema as follows:

“Film analogies are convenient, since the world of the cinema was the first to introduce discontinuity –a
segmented world in which each fragment maintains its won independence, thereby permitting a multiplicity of
combinations. In film, each frame (or photogram) is placed in continuous movement. Inscribing movement the
rapid succession of photograms constitutes the cinegram… Montage as a technique, includes such other devices
as repetition, inversion, substitution and insertion. These devices suggest an art of rupture, whereby invention
resides in contrast –event in contradiction.” (Tschumi 2009, 196-197)

Tschumi in his manifesto of Architectural Paradox intends to regenerate the conflict between the
space, praxis and the architectural approach on discipline. The Pyramid is a time-space parallel, which
is independent from event/experience and the Labyrinth is an event/experience-space parallel, which
is independent from time, finally the Pyramid-Labyrinth relation is the time-space-experience/event
triology, which is crystallized into a paradox. In the light of these relations, pyramid includes a
photographic image of time and labyrinth consisting of an architectural experience. Then the paradox
of pyramid and labyrinth collapses in the cinema including the parts of both sides: space-time-
experince. Where time, space and experience crystallize in an alternative space and coexist in a
mirror of reflections. “…architecture constitutes the reality of experience while this reality gets in the
way of the overall vision. Architecture constitutes the abstraction of absolute truth, while this very truth
gets in the way of feeling (Tschumi 1975, 226/18). Tschumi in his Architectural Paradox manifest
reaches a notion of absolute perception of time and space can be possible only in a paradoxal event,
which brings the concept and praxis together.
Heidegger, contrarily, explains space within itself borrowing the Hegel’s notion on time, which he
explains through space. Hegel puts space and time together. Heidegger clears his explanation as
follows: “Space is the unmediated indifference of Nature’s Being-outside-of-itself. This is a way of
saying that space is the abstract multiplicity of the points, which are differentiable in it.”(Heidegger
2007, 481)
Spacecould be said that, creates an image like an ocean where the waves occur as new places. The
point within is the space creates architecture by negation. Difference creates limits and place occurs.
As Heidegger says “If space gets represented –that is, if it gets intuited immediately in the indifferent
subsistence of its difference– then the negations are, as it were, simply given. But such a
representation, space does not get grasped in its Being.” (Heidegger 2007, 482)

ARCHITECTURE

Architecture is defined space.

Borders and frames make the place in a space and, create architecture through design.
The movement happening in a place, the choreography of the movement describes the space and the
space represents the time.
The space can be said that as a whole, which is formed from multiplicity and unity of uncountable
units. Bergson brings an approach of the comprehension of space through unity saying: “All unity is
the unity of a simple act of the mind. Units are divisible only because regarded as extended in space”
(Bergson 1910, 80). On the other hand units create the space in a relation, which makes a unit, the
whole.
Bergson starts to open his ideas on time. Firstly describes and makes his notes on space. The point
he tries to reach is passing through reducing space and extending time. “Pure duration is wholly
qualitative. It cannot be measured unless symbolically represented in space” (Bergson 1910, 104).
Architecture is claimed by Hegel as the first of all the arts, carrying physical and conceptual concerns
on space and time. The architectural body, architectural possibilities, and the architecture itself can be
the most confusing contradiction through the functionality and the design issue in architecture. As an
art form, one of the most powerful, interactive, plus most social art, architecture can only exist and
have a life within life. As any matter in the universe architectural product has a limited lifetime. The
lifetime has different parallel matters, which include the physical lifetime, functional lifetime, aesthetic
lifetime. These all lives happen and expire through time. Time eradicates the physical body gradually
till the body remains as a sculpture or even an image, a symbol of architecture. For the aesthetic and
functional lifetime a different process of time lapse works. Aesthetic time is an association of
philosophical and social concerns, which makes fashion and –ism inclinations. The aesthetic lifetime
of a building depends on the inclination of that time frame where it exists. Especially in today’s modern
world architecture has a faster time lapse, which causes rapid time flow on buildings then expiration
happens insensibly. Finally the functional timeline of buildings also depends more on social needs
and functional description of the building. As an example Zaha Hadid’ s fire station design was built in
1993 and functioned as a fire station but through time in a few years the building was converted into a
museum. Changing function can happen in a lifetime of a building. Similarly, ancient architectural ruins
also become open air museums which is also a change of function.
Image 3–Vitra Fire Station by Zaha Hadid Architects.

By the time and the needs change and the necessity around buildings converts and transforms the
architectural products. Even the architectural body has a static form; it includes events and
movements in and around. Especially in a city these happenings and events create a rapid time flow.
The spatial changes of the city, the social usage of the buildings and the change of needs, tendencies,
and expectations move the architecture through time, not bodily but creatively. This is the time lapse of
the lifetime of architecture. Time lapse becomes the movements, events and experiences taking time.
All the time lapse issue of architecture [physical, aesthetical, functional] in a closer aspect is mainly
existential. The existence of the body is deformed by time. In a city the spatial existence is expired
irrepressibly. The whole form of the artwork, the product diminishes gradually. When the body almost
disappears, then the concept, the essence glows more. Traces of architectural idea behind the
building survive and remain over time.
The essence of architecture becomes memory considering the attribution of Bergson on memory
approach to explain duration. By travelling inside the art history and anthropological timeline;
architecture seems as it has its own time; neither as eternal and natural as nature nor any physical
artistic form and body as painting and sculpture. The actual issue is not being eternal and long living;
the main concern here is to be “out of time”.
Time, as the most powerful magic turning things into a transformed situation, is a happening
deconstruction or/and a performed representation. The life as a timing process, changes objects
depending on the type and condition. The material, element chemically physically transforms itself by
absorbing time-lapse. By the flow of time, the waving bodies of spatial being; live in a frame of time.
This time frame of life of the body becomes a fragment of time itself including past, now and future.
‘Now’ is the mythical fragment of time, which is already confused many philosophers arguing,
commenting, searching for the real concept of life and time.
Time has conceptual parts as itself containing the concept of time and the body of time. Concept of
time is a real concern, which is still discussed by philosophers and still is observed by scientists. The
body of time is like a projection of the real concept of time. As Bergson asserts the general/abstract
time is a representation of the experienced time. The ‘clock-wise’ understanding of time is for the mind
and the nature, which needs to be explained through a chronological way, as a timeline, through a
clock and the calendar. This chrono-line image of time is almost dismissed by the new quantum
physics but the meaning of the time issue still considered as the base of any theory and history. The
fragmentary approach of time is tried to be explained by many important philosophers. Mainly Hegel,
Kant, Bergson, Husserl and Heidegger are the best known philosophers whose ideas on time are still
discussed.

The places created through architecture of space, in order to explain time and duration, obstruct the
penetration between inner space + duration; and external yard + general time. In this point cinema can
help to explode the sensations and memory of creative mind. Cinema raises the space for the intrinsic
and the extrinsic experiences, perceptions to penetrate into a new created alternative universe.

CINEMA

[Emancipator of city&architecture from time lapse]

“The cinema does not just present images, it surrounds them with a world”- (Deleuze 2012, 66)
Cinema as the seventh art has the specialty by having those dimensions time, space, experience and
additionally an alternative world of images. Surpassing many art products the movement and the time
experience makes cinema different. Taking this approach into the path of time and space experiences,
perceptions and relations in between; cinema externalize the inner universe, immanent existence of
duration, which can lend a place for architecture to be.

Cinema decomposes and recomposes movement in relation to equidistant ‘any-instant-whatever’s: it produces a

sensible and immanent analysis of movement, meaning that movement is described in continuity rather than
being an inevitable but ultimately inessential transition between two figures, two shots or two poses. (Marrati,
2008, 8)

The architecture in between time and space, stuck into the experience of daily life and the history
means the general time and duration, seems to be saved as a new universe, not only as a memory of
images and events but also as a utopia. “This analytic character of cinematographic movement
attracted Henri Bergson’s attention as early 1907 in Creative Evolution. In order to reproduce any
movement whatever on screen –the movement, for example, of a regiment marching by –cinema
proceeds first of all through decomposition” (Marrati 2008, 9)
“…according to Bergson, cinema’s operation is doubly artificial: rather than catching movements as
they are happening, it must do with immobile shots from which, with the help of the camera, it then
extracts an impersonal and abstract movement, ’movement in general’ ” (Marrati 2008, 9) Marrati here
continues through explaining the artificiality of the camera that is parallel to philosophy. The
mechanism of thought made by philosophy coincides with the camera and collect images of
perception saying “…the new technology of nascent cinema merely corroborates the ‘oldest illusion’ of
conceptual thought.” (Marrati 2008, 9) From this perspective the
Art products get born, live and die in abstract/general time. Because the object of the art is visible in
the space, mortal in time, consumable, touchable, perceptible anytime even it is on the street in daily
life or in a museum protected from outer effects. Time and movement cover the object and provides a
life. Through the life of object time lapse emerges over the image. Contrarily in cinema, the art product
has its own universe. Time and space is provided by art itself. Cinematic object, the film, is not
affected by its time nor its space. The movement, the experience and the life of the film is cyclic; it
does not have a dead end or a hole to let time in. The only hole of the film invites perception,
experience and subjects inside this distinct universe. The rabbit hole from the Alice in Wonderland
obviously brings this inner place out and the exterior subjective attention in. (Alice in Wonderland
2010)

Image 4–Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton.

“For Deleuze, cinema helps us to think time ‘differently’, not only as movement and equivalence, but
also as indeterminacy.” (Fitzmaurice, Shiel 2001, 154). Indeterminacy of cinema is made of internal,
uncountable, subjective perception and experience. Here comes the idea of Bergson on duration,
which is an immanence perception of events and general time that creates creative mind to express
itself out through art. Cinema as a capable art may act out the inner understanding of time and space.
Although cinema has capacity of express in motion, also it has other limits around space and time
creation. Cinema, with its own limits of space and time, creates an intrinsic movement place, time
image, and choreographic experience not only because of the camera movements and montage but
also the philosophical thought behind the narration. The watch itself becomes a historical experience,
out of film time, inside a chronology, out of the film space, inside a universal space. Also while the
watch is static and then an immobile action, the film transforms into different images, even an
imperceptible movement of camera transmutes the image, then to think ‘differently’ becomes more
than an active thought, it creates a passive experience through abstract time, personal history.
Cinema by this way brings a universe out in the hands of the seer, opens a window from the eyes to
the memory.
Summing all the debates and the assertion up modestly, through the cinema, there is created a new
history of a new time and a space behind which can be said to exist a distinct universe. This universe
in a new language stores in the memory, expired elements of architecture, the story in between the
city; reflects as a mirror from a parallel scene. Imaginative utopias, existing cities, fictional histories
become the depth; the third dimension of the cinema inside a space-time relation then time lapses
here in town in front of our eyes and jumps into a different/distinct space to circle around the loop of
cinematographic time.
“If the film cannot locate a utopian space beyond the reach of capital, its cinematography –the
movement of the camera –suggests an alternative other than death through which to struggle with
capital. Cyclo(film, juxtaposes several narrative strands which coexist in the city and which coincide
through the logic of capital.” (Fitzmaurice, Shiel 2001, 155)
Deleuze, in his book of Cinema II, develops an assertion on time image on cinema. In cinema time
crystallizes; past future and present merges into one and becomes crystal of time. As Deleuze mainly
inspired from assertions of Bergson, makes a point and explains his thoughts as follow: “Bergson’s
theses on time: past coexist with the present that it has been; the past is preserved in itself, as past in
general (non-chronological); at each time splits itself into present and past, present that passes and
past which is preserved.” (Deleuze 2012, 82)
As Bergson’s idea on time states that duration is a personal and inner perception Deleuze tries to
explain this in another way as follows: “the only subjectivity is time, non-chronological time grasped in
its foundation, and it is we who are ‘internal to time’ not the other way round.” (Deleuze 2012, 82).
Here Deleuze creates a new comprehension on subjectivity rather than time: it is the mind, which
expresses itself out, and penetrates from inner place of duration into external space of general time.
Deleuze in that statement brings us into another perspective to the intrinsic understanding of time
through the subject; it is more than the subjective duration; now it is the time, which passes through
inside us. This seems more than to perceive time, becomes to be perceived by time. Time becomes
the subject of perception flows in and out.

“Subjectivity is never ours; it is time that is the soul or the spirit, the virtual. The actual is always objective but the
virtual is subjective: it was initially the affect, that which we experience in time; then time itself pure virtually, which
divides itself in two as affector and affected, ‘the affection of self by self’ as definition of time.” (Deleuze 2012, 82)

Turning back to the actual and virtual idea of Deleuze, the subject changes the position and becomes
the object as the actual through a mirror becomes the virtual, which is said: the reflection of inner
experience with the help of a device like mirror, the camera, expresses itself out loud. The Objective of
camera transforms into a vehicle of perception, duration and imagination and makes the intrinsic
virtaulity a new actual reality in another space; the space of cinema, a new architecture, the
wonderland of creative mind.
In this point cinema as a new subject not the object of art becomes the affected, the actor of the
perception and experience through time and space. Cinematographic record transforms into a mind
and memory, which Bergson claims as the creator of duration; the internal space of experience. Then
time lapse disappears in a cycle of non-chronological loop of experiences and events that is why
cinema has the ability to emancipate architecture from time lapse.
To exemplify this effect of cinema, Wim Wenders in his wondering documentary film about Yasujiru
Ozu’s Tokyo, tells about the process of the film he made. In a scene of the memory he talks about the
camera film and memory saying: “I had a camera with me and did some filming. I have the pictures;
they have become my memory. But I think to myself: if you'd gone there without a camera, you would
remember more.” (Tokyo Ga 1985)

Image 5–Tokyo Ga directed by Wim Wenders.

Cinema makes an external/ transcendental collective memory and packs the history of past, present
and future, the space, neverland and the utopias, recollects them. Beside this unlimited memory of
history, the cinema crystalizes time. Merge of time makes an elimination of time lapse. Architecture as
a joint to the cinema, the place, the scene uses this reciprocal relation and tries to become eternal
through the camera. Objective time melts through the objective of camera and becomes the subjective
duration through the main architectural character of the scene.
Time lapse is contended with the camera, the eyes of the lenses but it seems possible to be defeated
by the external, objective general time. Then it becomes the inner, subjective duration to collect all the
memory inside.
As a conclusion in the light of all the notions around time and space, architecture and the cinema can
twine each other through the concept of time lapse. Architecture as a representation of space and
event; cinema as a representation of duration and experience might twine each other in an
interdisciplinary interval.
BIBLOGRAPHY

Bergson, H., 2009 An Introduction to Metaphysics, General Books LLC., www.general-books.net.

Bergson, H., translated by Mabelle L. Andison, 1992, The Creative Mind (La Pensée et le mouvant [1946]) New
York: The Citadel Press.
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Russell, B., ABC of Relativity, 4 edit. Felix Pirani, 2002, London Routledge.
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FILMOGRAPHY
Alice in Wonderland, 2010, directed by Tim Burton.
Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959, directed by Alain Resnais.
Samsāra 2013, directed By Ron Fricke.
Tokyo-Ga,1985, directed by Wim Wenders.

Images
Image 1, Samsāra 2013, directed By Ron Fricke.
Image 2, Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959, directed by Alain Resnais.
Image 3, Photographed by Christian Richter, Hélène Binet, Painting by Zaha Hadid Architects
http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/vitra-fire-station-2/
Image 4, Alice In Wonderland 2010, directed by Tim Burton
Image 5, Tokyo-Ga 1985, directed by Wim Wenders.