The synchronized city
Public clocks become instruments of industrial coordination. The minute hand moves from convenience to command.
Institute for temporal culture / Research programme 2026—2038Time is political
CHRONOS
We study the systems that tell bodies when to wake, work, wait and disappear.
Current cycle№ 24
Exhibitions / field clocks / civic research / public assemblies
↓Basel
CH
CH
New York
US
US
Almaty
KZ
KZ
Tokyo
JP
JP
A clock is never only a clock.
86,400
Seconds are distributed to everyone equally—then valued radically differently. CHRONOS is a transdisciplinary institute examining whose time is accelerated, whose is stolen, and which futures are allowed to arrive.
Use arrow keys, touch or drag. Five temporal thresholds.
03 / Active systems
Three instruments for now.
Each system leaves the gallery and enters public space: a device, a protocol and a question that refuses to stay theoretical.
Waiting Room
A portable chamber that exchanges fifteen minutes of stillness for fifteen minutes of paid civic leave.
Counter Clock
A public clock whose speed is set by the average pace of the slowest person in the square.
After / Now
A global timestamp that appears only when two distant strangers choose the same moment to pause.
04 / Public assembly / Basel
Who owns tomorrow?
A 24-hour civic forum with no keynote, no recordings and one agenda item: reclaiming a future from systems designed to pre-empt it.
24OCT / 2026 / 18:00 CET
Reserve a seat↗