Castle Park De Lovie

Jem Finer
Longplayer for Watou 1999

Jem Finer is one of the founding members of the folk punk band The Pogues. Today much of his artistic work relates to systems, extended processes and extremes of scale in both time and space. One of Finer’s most notable projects is Longplayer, a one thousand year long musical composition for singing bowls. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999 inside the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London. It will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again.

“While Longplayer is most often described as a 1000 year long musical composition, the preoccupations that led to its conception were not of a musical nature; they concerned time, as it is experienced and as it is understood from the perspectives of philosophy, physics and cosmology. At extremes of scale, time has always appeared to me as baffling, both in the transience of its passing on quantum mechanical levels and in the unfathomable expanses of geological and cosmological time, in which a human lifetime is reduced to no more than a blip”, according to the artist.

The installation Longplayer for Watou is not a recording, rather a performance by a small computer which is in time with all other instances of Longplayer playing around the globe. The music literally comes out of a singing bowl. The bowl is filled with water which vibrates sympathetically with the sound making complex waveforms.

— Jem Finer UK, °1955
Since studying computer science in the 1970s, Jem Finer has worked in a variety of fields, including photography, film, experimental and popular music, sound recording, sculpture and installation. Recent work revolves around a fascination with the hurdy-gurdy and includes hrdy-grdy, a cassette released by Benedict Drew’s Thanet Tape Centre. Underground, music for an exhibition of Jock McFadyen’s paintings of tube stations, was released in February 2024.

Longplayer was composed by Jem Finer and commissioned by Artangel in 1995. It is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust. The composition can be heard at several public listening posts around the world.

Mikes Poppe
Chaoskampf 2024

In his oeuvre, Mikes Poppe explores, among other things, the complex issue of history and its (inescapable) impact on contemporary man. He explores how an artist by necessity cherishes or destroys the legacy of his predecessors in order to develop his own artistic trajectory. “I am fascinated by the inevitable but cathartic moment of inertia and silence that follows the act of destruction”, Poppe says.

In the photographic diptych Chaoskampf, the artist attempts to capture this powerful momentum. By showing images in their multiple layering, he breaks through their static nature. The result is a semi-still of solitary performative action in front of a camera. The artist: “I wear white overalls, gloves and a balaclava; my only tool is a white canvas. I hit the canvas with my head. I repeat this action until my head and body pierce the canvas”.