Real-Time
Real-Time is a four-screen device cycling through some 200 live-streaming CCTV cameras from around the world. The footage ranges from a pizza kitchen in Moscow to a car dealership in California; an elevator in New York to a church altar in Milan; a clothing store in Tunis to a factory floor in Osaka; a meditation room on Mount Abu to a barbershop in Bali, and so on.
Timestamps on each feed function primarily as markers of simultaneity—of being live. Insofar as the device keeps time, it measures its abstract passage through an unfiltered sprawl of everyday human life, a window into the sheer banality of everything happening everywhere, all at once.
That a voyeuristic absence of storyline looms throughout is largely the point. It loosely affirms what Dave Hickey once suggested: real life may not have a narrative, but it sure offers some nice vignettes.
Timestamps on each feed function primarily as markers of simultaneity—of being live. Insofar as the device keeps time, it measures its abstract passage through an unfiltered sprawl of everyday human life, a window into the sheer banality of everything happening everywhere, all at once.
That a voyeuristic absence of storyline looms throughout is largely the point. It loosely affirms what Dave Hickey once suggested: real life may not have a narrative, but it sure offers some nice vignettes.
Contribution to 24 Hours, an exhibition curated by Jamie Wolfond and Simple Flair at Riviera during the 2025 Milano Salone.
Programming:
Dan Brewster
Production:
Caliper
Programming:
Dan Brewster
Production:
Caliper
Project Assistants:
Mauro Ferreira
Nina Chiodi
Images:
Benjamin Lund
Mauro Ferreira
Nina Chiodi
Images:
Benjamin Lund