Time takes its course, and we all perceive its presence. The clock’s hands spin around the dial. The sun once again moves across the sky. The subway is delayed, and yet another hair has turned gray.

Still, the question of what time really is has occupied humanity for centuries. Can we truly say that the future or the past exists?

The exhibition Then, now, later – a small exhibition about measuring and experiencing time was shown during the autumn of 2024. In the exhibition, laboratory objects, text fragments, and film offered entry points into the various ways Nobel Prize laureates in Physics and Literature have explored time – one of humanity’s remaining mysteries.

What is time?

On April 6, 1922, two Nobel laureates tried to sort things out. In the exhibition, philosopher Ellen Emilie Henriksen recounted the meeting in Paris between Nobel Prize Laureate in literature Henri Bergson and Nobel Prize Laureate in physics Albert Einstein, where they entered into a debate about the nature of time. Does the answer to what time is lie in physics or in philosophy?

How little time is it possible to register?

An attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second. Using lab equipment from the 2023 Nobel Prize Laureates in physics Pierre Agostini, Anne L’Huillier and Ferenc Krausz, the exhibition presented their work on generating attosecond pulses of light.

In literature, the passage of time is a recurring theme. Prose, poetry, and drama explore the nature of time in different ways. Through Nobel Prize Laureates in literature such as Annie Ernaux, Bob Dylan, Wisława Szymborska and Tomas Tranströmer, the exhibition Then, Now, Later offered perspectives on experienced time through text.

The exhibition also featured the eight-hour video work Self Portrait as Time. In this performance, British artist Marcus Coates blurs the boundary between himself and his clock by following its movement, second by second.