Maureen Ketting

In a society where efficiency is paramount, we increasingly try to fit more activities into the same amount of time. We fill our days with plans, constantly switch between tasks, and expect ourselves to juggle multiple things at once. Social norms and expectations continue to crowd our schedules. When we take on too many commitments and responsibilities, it begins to feel as though something is constantly demanding our attention. Because we feel responsible for meeting all of these expectations, we experience time pressure.

Do you have a minute? is an installation in the form of a kinetic marble run. It consists of multiple tracks through which coloured marbles roll. The tracks symbolise the continuous timeline of our lives, while the marbles represent the appointments and responsibilities that people add to their daily routines.

With this work, I aim to raise awareness of how time pressure arises. The marble run makes visible the way commitments and responsibilities can accumulate over time. The installation not only visualises this pressure but also makes it physically and spatially tangible. By inviting visitors to actively participate and place marbles onto the tracks, it becomes clear how our own choices contribute to the creation of time pressure.

The message I hope to convey through this installation is that time pressure is not caused by time itself, but by the number of commitments, expectations, and responsibilities that we try to fit into the time we have.