text

for Carried Bells, a process-based installation by artist duo Kata Kovács and Tom O’Doherty, which will be exhibited at Hošek Contemporary in Berlin from 5-25 October 2019.


Reach out and fetch
by Josie Thaddeus-Johns

I

On Sunday morning, they begin at 9am. I hear them from my bed, when I’m never awake already, but sometimes dozing. First the louder set, closer, strikes my brain chords purposefully, before a second joins in concert. They’re out of line, adjoint. Ill at ease, and finding their feet, like two troubled toddlers learning how to walk.

II

“Church bells in Germany: God damn it, WHY?” is the first question that the internet has about them. Is it legal, to be disturbed so? Apparently, yes. While, by contrast, my neighbour will shout down from a top-foor Hof-facing window to complain about the last-night-wine-bottles smashing into the recycling, the church bells are simply accepted. It’s the rule. They’re not real noise. They are worn with pride, elements of exactitude for the daytime crowd.

III

Clocks, in general. We made an arbitrary system, to help us remember when to wake up and feed the cattle. The arbitrary system became a public good, a virtual dimension before the virtual meant The Virtual, hollered and hammered onto maps of our minds. Imagine: a world before watches, a world when time was part of the outside, not the inside. A world when we didn’t have to listen to the passing of time if we simply had nowhere to be.

IV

It took me a long time to figure out the system of peals. Now, let me tell you: One strike for quarter past, two for half past, three for quarter to, four for on the hour, with an additional, louder procession to tell you which hour. They could be different and they are, in other places. Big Ben’s famous Westminster Quarters echoes in my ears – four peals in a phrase that sing, time and time again.

V

Listening to the church bells, on your daily grind (off to work, keeping the dog regular) do you ever think about where the church is? Do you ever think about its physical location, the mechanisms that swing through the rafters and the wood and metal that hinges back and forth to get that bong bong bong bong out into your brain? It enters through a window, whether open or not, the sound bumping one molecule and then another. It enters through ears, through blinds and shutters, through empty space, through warmth-encasing curtains.

VI

I’m not religious, but when I was at university in Oxford I lived next to the bell tower. Sunday mornings were much worse then, weeks meaning nothing to a student except another essay due, another party survived.

VII

The bell rings by swinging in a tower – high up enough that the world can hear its sound spread. It’s an anciently calibrated practice that requires care and sonic know-how. There are architects at Christian academic institutions learning exactly how to get the ring right, analysing it with computers as if it were a patient with a tumour.

VIII

In 2017, artist Christine Sun-Kim was disturbed by the church bells near her home. Sun-Kim is deaf, and found the idea of pervasive, near-constant sound quite oppressive: “I don’t know anything about those sounds, and now they’re a part of daily routine,” she said. Does anyone know about those sounds?

IX

Watch from the outside, can you see the molecules shake? No, and none of us can.

X

And then the disturbance becomes a part of our scenery, when you go to school in the morning, when you need to meet a friend, when the pasta water’s boiled. Don’t look down at your phone, listen up to the air.

XI

Kuchuck kuchuck says the U Bahn, the raspy breath of the cars whispering underneath it, a bus whining over it. Like an unnoticed bodily awareness, perceiving even when we don’t know we are. It tells us that Ann has a secret and that Felicity shouldn’t be trusted because we smell it on them.

XII

The bells reach out for us, whether we like it or not. They float invasively. In the city, we all shimmy alongside each other with the ringing in our ears of a smooth environment.

The bells reach out for us, and did you ever think they were asking us to go fetch them?