Time-lapse and the projected body

The technique of time-lapse, which has been applied to all manner of subjects from the cellular to the celestial, has an ambiguous relationship with the human body. Whereas slow motion typically accentuates the force and aesthetics of physical movement, time-lapse tends to decorporealize human figures, projecting bodies forward through time while turning them into phantasmal projections in space. This article examines a number of experimental films that explore the body’s precarious state within time-lapse. Here, the body is figured variously as a medium through which environmental forces are made visible, as a liminal figure that leaves traces of its presence in the landscape or as a kind of ghost suspended outside of its native temporality. These works destabilize the body both as the subject and as the object of representation, making ambiguous its place in relation to different temporal scales.