The Happy Long Hour
speakers, various bells, paper clips, sound
66 min, loop
2026

This June (2026), I made three functional bell objects that formed the core of "The Happy Long Hour". This 66-minute sound loop works a bit like a clock on a church tower. Every once in a while, the bells ring in a recorded children's voice. It says things like, "Swallowing spit takes the same time as spitting it out" or "It's too late for a crime of passion; everything has intent now" or "Person T approaches with the timing of a soft-boiled egg." or "Business time and fun time follow a strangely similar rhythm". or "Doomscrolling reality comes with its own sense of temporal endurance".

Each sentence carries some temporal information, which becomes longer and longer as the loop progresses. Therein the voice spins a loose narrative through the exhibition space, often commenting on possible situations happening in real time. I wanted to do something where time isn't made present as a discrete entity, as in its quantization in seconds or beats and so on, but instead something to vibe with, shaped by experience, maybe slightly awkward, to feel and relate to, more embodied. The childrens voice seemed fitting as a voice whose authority isn't yet "fully formed", just as the little bells, in the most real sense, are bells that can't be transformed into cannons.