As part of Faire commun – a shared ecology project in Parc Rigot – least invites you to reflect on the rhythms that flow through living beings, places and time itself. “Faire commun” also means “making time together”: exploring how our lives align – or fall out of step – with the cycles that surround us. This text invites readers to attune to the world’s many pulses, imagining new forms of sensitive coexistence.

At Parc Rigot, students, researchers and artists came together to resonate with the land – an interdisciplinary and sensory exploration aimed at revealing the unique rhythms of the landscape, its lifeforms and its uses. By observing the park’s centuries-old oaks, its passers-by and its pond, they highlighted how each element vibrates at its own tempo – sometimes steady, sometimes chaotic – composing a shared, living score.

The word “rhythm” comes from the Greek verb rhéô, meaning “to flow”. In Greek philosophy, panta rhei (“everything flows”) captures the thought of Heraclitus of Ephesus, philosopher of perpetual change: all is in constant transformation, like a river whose waters move constantly, so much so that “one can never step into the same water twice” …

Water, indeed, is at the heart of our first experience of rhythm. Even before birth, we perceive sound through amniotic fluid: heartbeats, breath, blood flow. Only low, rhythmic sounds travel through this liquid medium. After birth, part of this water remains in us: the inner ear, still filled with fluid, senses the world’s vibrations. This original water holds a deep memory of rhythm and time within us. Perhaps that is why Rigot’s pond, nestled at the base of the park, acts as a sensory magnet: it draws the eye, attracts wildlife and becomes a focal point where human and non-human rhythms converge across the day.

Humanity has long sought to measure time. One of the earliest known instruments is a water clock (clepsydra) from the 14th century BCE, discovered in the Karnak Temple in Egypt. Two vessels, connected by a small opening, allowed time’s flow to be measured steadily. At Rigot, the oaks planted on the western side play a similar role: silent timekeepers, inscribing memory into their bark year after year.

In soundscapes little touched by human activity, most sounds follow predictable rhythms. Birdsong, the rustle of wind in leaves, the soft lapping of water – these recurring motifs are registered by living beings as familiar and non-threatening. Such regularity soothes and stabilises the soul. In contrast, abrupt noises – construction, crowds, traffic – disrupt sensory balance, triggering alarm. Auditory rhythm is thus a key element of perceptual stability.

Rhythm is essential to how every species hears. Neurons in the ear and brain activate only when sound frequencies align with a reference rhythm. In the 1960s, Hungarian researcher Péter Szőke slowed down birdsong to reveal its hidden complexity, unheard by the human ear. This attention to the invisible and the subtle informs the sensory work carried out in Parc Rigot: to listen, to slow down, to observe what often slips beneath the surface of perception.

Drawing: ©Anaëlle Clot.

For living beings, time unfolds on three levels: internal rhythm, synchronisation with environmental cycles and coordination with others. Internal rhythm is fine-tuned by external signals – zeitgebers (“time-givers”) – such as light, temperature and seasons. For migratory birds, the memory of thawing snow, the length of day and the behaviour of other species help determine when to depart for breeding grounds.

Time, then, is not solely personal, it is also social. In a beehive, nurse bees maintain a constant internal rhythm, while foragers adjust to the timing of flower openings. The coordination of these internal clocks generates a shared rhythm, or a collective time.

Human societies, too, maintain diverse and complex relationships with time. In many Indigenous cultures, time is tied to local rhythms of land, animals and landscapes. Among Sámi reindeer herders, for instance, the concept of jahkodat holds that each year is unique: migration depends on the snow thawing, pasture health and other shifting factors. “One year is not the sister of the next”, a Sámi proverb says: each cycle demands careful attention and constant adaptation.

Today, globalisation has dulled this seasonal sensitivity. Yet seasonality is not universal. Some regions know four seasons; others alternate between wet and dry. In Nagori, Ryoko Sekiguchi notes that Japan traditionally divides the year into 24 seasons, or even 72 micro-seasons. This refined sense of time shapes language itself, with words and haikus linked to precise moments, weaving culture, climate and expression together.

But so-called “objective” time is also a human invention. In Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald reminds us that while time is tied to the stars, it ultimately rests on convention. Even the solar day varies; to stabilise our clocks, we invented a “mean sun” – a fictional body whose steady motion serves as a reference.

The standardisation of time intensified in the 19th century with the advent of railways. To coordinate schedules, time zones were imposed, overriding the diversity of local times. The world entered an era of strict synchronisation, a standardisation that now coexists with the ecological and temporal dissonance we face.

For non-humans, life depends on a fine attunement between living rhythms and Earth’s cycles. Climate change is unsettling these balances. At Rigot, as elsewhere, seasons shift, temperatures rise, blooms and migrations fall out of sync, disrupting biological clocks. This breakdown threatens the reproduction, food sources and survival of many species. When life’s rhythms fall out of step with Earth’s cycles, the very balance of life begins to waver.

In the face of growing dissonance between human time and living time, Faire commun calls for a sensitive reorientation: to slow down, to listen, to live together. Parc Rigot becomes a shared learning ground, where we can explore new ways of inhabiting time, neither linear or productivist, but rather cyclical, porous, attuned to what grows, changes or disappears. By reconciling Earth’s many temporalities, this project sketches the outline of an inhabitable future.