'It obviously started quietly'

James Lingwood

Photograph by Stephen White

Tatsuo Miyajima’s Running Time was one of those projects where the basic ideas were in place for quite a long time because the main concerns of his work are so clear. There was a lot of looking and researching different spaces. We were very interested in the idea of an observatory of one kind or another. We looked at lots of observatories, the most beautiful of which was at Greenwich.

The people at the National Maritime Museum were very responsive and Miyajima could not have been more excited about the idea of working in a place so close to the actual 0° (longitude) Meridian, symbolising a Western concept of time.

There’s something supremely rational about the architecture of the Queen’s House, it is often thought of as the first Classical building in England. For the installation Miyajima used the Great Hall which was darkened and had these figures, just slowly gliding across the floor.

The performance Clear Zero involved 40 or 50 individuals counting backwards in different languages or dialects. The red numbers were switched off one by one and removed from the space, from the Great Hall, with an audience looking down from the viewing balcony. Then the light went on and slowly but surely, one after another individuals speaking a huge range of different languages entered the space and counted at their own speed and moved in their own direction. So there was somehow a human equivalent to the red counters. It obviously started quietly, first one voice coming in, then another and another …