“STORIES ARE SITTING ON RADIO WAVES:” TIME IN BURNING VISON

Abstract

The most impressive and potentially confusing aspect of Marie Clements’ 2003 play “Burning Vision” is its treatment of time. While the plot or rather parallel plots can be pieced together after a few readings (involving native Dene, Japanese, or American characters), the representation of time is more challenging and thought-provoking. Short scenes and brief dialogues seem to fly at the reader like shrapnel. Besides the effect of flickering movie images, this method of rendering time seems to affirm the old idea of past, present and future existing simultaneously in a work of art, or perhaps the postmodern idea of Harvey’s time-space compression. Besides these possible readings, Clements’ consistent use of changing radio frequency to announce yet another stage-scene / time-frame invites a more radical approach to this text. This research aims at showing the moral significance of the author’s rejection of chronological time. When the space-time reality is observed in terms of quantum physics, everything happens now and therefore has a powerful moral impact. In the spirit of connecting science and art, the ideas of Minkowski, David Foster, Wilson Colins and others will be brought up as popularised by Michio Kaku in his “Hyperspace” (1994).