Just a Second

2022, participatory performance, sixty drawings (ink on paper, each 15x15cm). Photos by Document Photography.

Just a Second took place at The Lock-Up, Newcastle, in 2022 as part of the group exhibition Radical Slowness. It was a participatory performance evoking the significance of a single second: a unit of time often overlooked as fleeting and insignificant. Yet a seemingly tiny moment can hold great depths of meaning. In such moments, words like ‘I love you’ and ‘goodbye’ are uttered, decisions are actioned, facial expressions and gestures of great magnitude are delivered, and lives can be saved—or taken away. A second is a remarkably significant span of time.

This performance invited the public to participate in an exchange of one second with Emma Fielden. Fifty-five people took part in the performance at The Lock-Up, with five more exchanges to take place soon, bringing the project to a total of sixty one-second exchanges—one. minute. One at a time, participants shared something about themselves in the space of one second which could be expressed as a single word, a short phrase, a gesture, or simply a glance. In response to their offering, Fielden created a drawing taking one second to complete. Participants recorded their offerings in a journal, noting their gestures and meanings. The drawings were photographed and packaged for the participants to take home with them on the day. Throughout the performance, a metronome was beating at 60bpm, providing a measure for the one-second gestures.

Documentation of the performance will be used to create a book to archive these personal one-second exchanges. The book will feature each drawing alongside its corresponding journal entry, photographs of the performance, and a curatorial essay by the curators of Radical Slowness, Tai Mitsuji and Anna May Kirk.