The heartbeat of Justus Lipsius

Ireland – as you may have noticed – holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union until the end of June. One of the key events associated with the Irish presidency will be a Bozar exhibition devoted to the Francis Bacon Studio, combined with an overview of contemporary Irish art. In the meantime, as a teaser, you can admire an installation called Skylum, which Andrew Kearney devised for the atrium of the Justus Lipsius building. Installations there, linked to a particular presidency, have now become a tradition. Most of them go unnoticed. One exception was the Czech contribution, by David Cerný, whose satire on the theme of Europe made front pages worldwide in 2009. That is not likely to happen with Kearney’s installation. The Irish artist has made a gigantic zeppelin that floats overhead and is equipped with a hundred lamps and sensors that react to the movements of passers-by. “The composition changes according to the interaction with the visitor,” Kearney told us when we tracked him down in Dublin. “If there are no passers-by, it stays silent.” As we found out for ourselves when we dropped by on a Wednesday afternoon at 4.30 pm. There were hardly any passers-by in the atrium, so while lights flickered from time to time in the zeppelin, it remained silent, apart from a gentle buzzing. Either all the officials had already gone home – as in the clichéd image – or they were still beavering away, which would contradict that stereotypical picture. So we decided a second visit would be a good idea, after a break for a Guinness in one of the nearby Irish pubs. At 5.15 pm there was indeed a bit more activity. When a stream of bureaucrats rushed out, the thing flickered a bit, while samples of tolling church bells and a faint saxophone could be heard in the background. It didn’t really make us ecstatic. And we couldn’t, sadly, hear any of the poem by the Irish bard Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh: for that, maybe we would have to get up a bit earlier to experience the zeppelin at full blast in the morning rush hour.

Andrew Kearney: Skylum > 30/6, ma/lu/Mo > vr/ve/Fr 9 > 17.30, gratis/gratuit/free, JUSTUS LIPSIUS BUILDING, Wetstraat 175 rue de la Loi, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.eu2013.ie