An Ethnography of Longplayer: Year 25

An Ethnography of Longplayer: Year 25 is a new work by artist and animator Jess Mountfield. In the 25th anniversary year of Jem Finer’s 1000-year-long piece of music, Mountfield’s installation explores the fleeting nature of stewardship, when what is being cared for has been composed to continue for many human lifetimes.

A collage of the voices of Longplayer’s present custodians plays on an acetate disc that deteriorates with every spin. Each voice considers Longplayer in the context of their understanding of, and relationship with, time.

Accompanying the recording is an animated loop of acetate prints, showing light passing through the windows of the lighthouse here at Trinity Buoy Wharf and other non-human long flows of time – projected through Longplayer’s shadowscape of singing bowls.

Jess Mountfield is an artist, animator and ethnographer interested in unstitching the word ‘time’ to see what, exactly, we mean by it. Her cross-media works explore and ask questions of the varied temporalities we are enmeshed by.

The installation will play during regular opening hours at the lighthouse (on Saturdays and Sundays, between 11am and 4pm) throughout October, or until the acetate disc deteriorates into incomprehensibility.

Please be aware that on occasion, there may be other events taking place in the space below the lighthouse which may mean external noise is audible for brief periods of time. See here for more information and to plan your visit accordingly.