For Papuans, time is literally all over the place: there is the time of constantly deferred national independence, which in each passing year seems less likely to materialize. There is the time of unsettling as a mode of settler colonialism, operationalized by successive Indonesian governments that have accorded a cosmetic measure of self-rule but do not want Papuans to have much infrastructure to work with. There is the time of jettisoning, as many Papuans simply bow out of adherence to any narrative of progression, preferring to live in a ‘time without time’ rather than be situated on a scale of relative development or underdevelopment. There is the time of continuous and quotidian disjunctions, where Papuan social life follows constantly improvised rhythms and forms of gathering that produce no specific disposition but mark something different than what has transpired before. There is the time of accompaniment, where every context and event is supplemented with a singular sensibility and perception that is not translatable into anything else yet provides a measure of an experience of temporary freedom in the midst of relentless subjugation. Each of these temporalities has a provisional assemblage of materials, sites, protocols – in other words, an infrastructuring – that makes Jayapura, West Papua's largest city, seem perpetually ‘new’ in the sense of dispositions being constantly deferred in favour of a ‘look’ where the city seems to be going nowhere. It is as if there are simply too many temporalities at work, pushing and pulling against each other, with no hope of reconciliation.

For many residents of Jayapura, time begins as the famous song by the Papuan group the Black Brothers mark it:

The song refers to the beginnings of what is commonly referred to as the ‘great awakening’, which gradually worked its way across all of West Papua's diverse terrain and populations in an enduring fight against Indonesian colonization/annexation and for national self-determination (Kusumaryati, 2018; 2020).