Introduction: Intersecting memories and activating temporalities

Our relation with the notion of time, ever volatile, seems to be shifting again. Since the systematisation and measuring procedures introduced by the industrialisation of labour, there have been numerous apparatuses developed and put into practice to organise our life in modern society according to temporal coordinates. Yet, clock time may not match the perception of passing hours. And eras may not adjust to calendar divisions. One hundred years ago, on 6th April 1922, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson had the most illustrious debate on the nature of time itself, with clashing perspectives that drew on science and culture and which have since inspired numerous theoretical stands. Though past, present and future still constitute the general parameters we refer to, the concepts and layers convoked when considering the duration and simultaneity of time, in its relation to history, memory and action are many. For us, living in 2022 – still dealing with Covid global pandemic and now abruptly facing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a new war in Europe that violates established humanitarian rules and international law by the hour – time has become an even more unstable and ungraspable notion...