Inner Time 

Re:Light Regensburg, Germany, 2026  


Inner Time is a living architecture of light, sound and movement, inviting audiences into a choreography of transformation and shared presence. Conceived as a time capsule holding memory within the present moment, the work allows past and present to exist simultaneously, not as sequence but as shared breath.

At the centre stands a kinetic sculpture, handcrafted and angular in form. Its precise geometry gives it the quality of something timeless: neither entirely of this moment nor of any other, as though it has arrived from the future or from a distant past. An object that exists outside of time, even as it measures it. From this form, rotating arms of golden light trace slow celestial paths through darkness. As they turn, they illuminate what is already there: the strata of history pressed into these walls, this water, this air. Light falling on the past, making it visible.

The sculpture stands in a circular reflecting pool. Seen from above, the arms describe a cross against the dark surface, their reflection doubling the geometry below. Up close, the light is warm and golden, felt as much as seen. At full intensity it presses against the face with a quality that is almost physical, encouraging the eyes to close and the body to become its own instrument of listening. Sound passes through rather than around. In this way the work addresses each person directly and privately, even within a crowd.

The soundscape is composed in collaboration with the Regensburger Domspatzen, a choir with over a thousand years of history, unearthing some of the earliest choral music sung in Regensburg. At its source is Te lucis ante terminum, "To thee before the end of light", a Compline hymn adapted by Thomas Tallis (1505–1585) from early Gregorian monophonic chant into polyphonic score, sung in Regensburg Cathedral during the Renaissance. Three ancient voices drift in and out of phase, moving from dissonance toward harmony as if searching for agreement across vast distances of time. The original three-minute score is expanded into a ninety-minute soundscape, drawing out what is latent within it: voices moving like a needle through the heart of human resonance, pulling harmony slowly from dissonance and instilling a connection with the genius loci, the spirit of place made suddenly and quietly audible.

As a long durational work, Inner Time is encountered differently on each visit. One arrives, leaves and returns. Each encounter opens onto a different moment in the cycle. The work does not announce itself or build toward resolution; it simply continues, patient and unhurried, available to whoever pauses long enough to enter it.

The water below holds everything, a mirror reflecting what lies beneath the surface: memory, the unconscious and the invisible life of a place. To stand at its edge is to stand at a threshold between what is seen and what is sensed, between the individual and the collective, between a thousand years of voices and the breath of the person standing beside you.

This is ultimately what the work reaches toward: not spectacle but presence. A space where time is felt as something held and turning rather than rushing forward. A place where we might pause together and in pausing find ourselves briefly connected, to the work, to each other and to something that has no single name.