The Boring Mobile at BIG ART

At BIG ART 2021 on the Hembrugterrein, Beyond Space joined ninety independent artists and galleries with a monumental mobile. Harking back to Alexander Calder, the kinetic installation is made up of 42 perfectly balanced Boring clocks. Spanning six metres across, it spins counter clockwise, as if to turn back time, to a hypnotic soundtrack of office sounds by Coen Berrier: the ring of a phone, a computer starting up, the faraway screech of a fax machine, a drawn out yawn.

After a year of lockdowns, it welcomed the office worker back and invited them to reclaim the elastic time that happens when the clock ticks away the working day. Under the mobile, visitors sank into bean bags made for the occasion by Siersema and gave themselves over to it. It is in that empty space where time disappears that the magic happens. Boredom breeds creativity.

The Boring Mobile is the third in a series of installations inspired by the boredom rituals of office culture. The first was the clock of sixty bins and one man throwing paper, with Lernert & Sander. The second was the dysfunctional cabinet in homage to Ettore Sottsass, shown at Design Museum Den Bosch. The clocks were donated by Lensvelt, MONO built the installation.