1597 Seconds is a role play game by artist Arseny Zhilyaev and game designer and dramaturge Asya Volodina, where you as a visitor have the oppurtunity to participate.
The Institute for Mastering of Time in the role-playing game 1597 Seconds is an organisation operating in an undefined future. The institute’s aim is to achieve immortality for all organised creations of the universe. With the aim of reaching eternal life, the institute is dedicated to the cause of “optimizing the time continuum” and its disciples practice controlling time.
The Institute also seeks to decentralize the human subject position. In order to do so, the disciple must submit to a transformation. This starts with the process of learning to feel as organised matter of any kind. The better a person is able to think of themselves as a thing, the easier it will be for them to deal with their own time optimisation. Since the human brain can keep up intense activity for circa 26 minutes (or 1,597 seconds) at a time, this is a good amount of time for beginners to work with.
Photo: Anton Donikov. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019.