Time: the universal truth, a constant system across nations. Definite, concrete, unquestionable?
The wrist watch I am wearing begs to differ. It has a black leather strap, a large black face and white numbers from 1 to 12. It is normal in many respects, until you notice that the numbers appear in reverse order. The number 1 is to the left of the 12, instead of the typical 11. The reason? This is a watch that tells time in an anti-clockwise direction. This is a watch that challenges temporal convention.
Ramiro Ulloa's interest in designing such time-tellers came after a trip to Asia. Happening upon a factory that produced similar specimens for an international crowd, he asked for a copy of their design and so was born his craft. For Ramiro, however, the backwards nature of the watches goes far beyond a quirky aesthetic.
‘Technical matters have always been imposed by dominant systems’, he tells me, describing his bewilderment when he was taught at school that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. ‘This isn't true in my reality’, he declares. In La Paz, water boils at 72 degrees. ‘If we want to go against dominant systems, we need to create situations that can change the mentality of the population.’
These dominant systems, of course, are those of the hegemonic ‘north.’ They are the social, cultural, and political modes of superiority established by European and U.S. powers in Latin American countries for centuries. ‘They imposed a colonial logic, their manner of reasoning. In short, they wanted us to be like Europe,’ says Cecilio Ilasaca, a member of the Vice Ministry of Decolonisation.
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