CURFUW BELLS

During medieval times curfew bells were rung to warn of impending doom or possible hostile threats. During peacetime the curfew bell introduced the night and signaled the time to extinguish fires and go to bed. Curfew Bells restages bell towers as a bygone marker of time. Before the invention of the mechanic clock it was bell towers that created a shared public time. Today, bells are metaphors for life in a past religious community. They resonate a distant era in which the contemporary digital communication was just unthinkable. The images, sounds and vibrations of the ringing of these bells were captured in the Antwerp medieval Cathedral and the neo Byzantine and modernist Sint-Lawrence Church. By using a specific audio technology and tactile materials, the image, sound, light and movement get disconnected from each other within the exhibition space. Hence an emulation of the chiming of the bells comes into being. Curfew Bells hovers on a sensual paradox of a truth without reality and a reality without a truth; it is a metaphysical variation on the Theme Park-like illustrations of a real but unmediated event. (Source: Robrecht Vanderbeeken)