CRIP TIME CLOCK. 2025

Crip Time Clock is a sculptural and performative work that reimagines time through the lived experience of chronic illness. Developed in collaboration with human geographer Dr. Elisabetta Crovara, the project emerged from shared conversations and reflections on how illness shapes our ability to work, move, and endure under capitalist structures of productivity. It responds directly to Elisabetta’s qualitative research with chronically ill women who work from home or in hybrid setups in Australia — interviews that revealed intimate, complex strategies of navigating the temporal pressures of productivity and labour.

From this research, three key temporal strategies emerged: anticipating, pacing, and pushing through. These became the conceptual backbone of the work. Drawing on crip theories and feminist disability studies’ on crip time, the piece challenges dominant notions of time as linear, smooth, and endlessly productive.

At its core is a 12-hour durational video, displayed on a large screen embedded in the clock’s surface. From 7am to 7pm, I perform the act of moving time forward — physically pushing weighted, fabric-covered clock hands (made from sandbags) across a circular floor. Surrounding me are objects I rely on daily: a bed, a yoga mat, a hot water bottle, an ice pack, medications, a laptop. These are not props; they form the quiet infrastructure that makes working through pain possible. The performance follows the arc of a real workday — beginning slowly, pacing, anticipating fatigue, pushing frantically, and eventually collapsing. When I stop, the clock stops. There is no illusion of seamless flow.

The installation is permanently mounted on the stairwell wall at the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Its form and scale were inspired by the simplicity of the large circular cut-outs in the building’s concrete. The larger circle acts as a stage — a space of domestic labour. The smaller inset, called the “crip time pocket”, holds a resting space, breaking the expected linear movement of a clock. Because when you live with illness, time doesn’t move predictably. It pauses. It drags. It spirals. It fails.

The sculptural surface is interrupted by three soft, bulbous forms made from netting, foam, and fabric in skin-toned and visceral shades. These organ-like masses press into the steel frame, disrupting its clean geometry and evoking something fleshy, fragile, and resistant — much like disabled bodies pushing against ableist structures.

Crip Time Clock is both personal and political. It makes visible the quiet, continuous negotiations that chronically ill people navigate to function within systems not built for them. It asks: what does productivity look like when rest is essential? When every action demands effort? When time doesn’t flow, but must be physically moved?

The work resists the spectacle of seamless productivity and the collapse of sick time into work time. It offers a different temporality — one shaped by fatigue, care, and disruption. Here, moving the clock hand is labour. Resting is labour. Navigating pain is labour.

Acknowledgments:

Permanent installation at the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (SGEAS), The University of Melbourne
Supported by the 2024 SGEAS Art-Science Engagement Initiative

Collaboration with Elisabetta Crovara and Jonathon Griggs

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Press
“A woman moves the hands of a clock by force. Every minute takes effort… Artist Marta Figueiredo reimagines time through the lens of chronic illness, and asks us to feel what productivity really costs.”
— The Saturday Paper, Melbourne Design Week 2025

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