In his sound installation Days (2009) Nauman tips the familiar time structure of the seven-day week out of kilter. From fourteen flat loudspeakers aligned in pairs—more membrane than volume—seven female and male voices recite the days of the week in varying order, at varying speeds and in varying cadences. The voices emanating from the directional speakers, suspended at head height, form a passageway that temporarily doubles the underground-connecting tract between the Kunstmuseum Hauptbau and Neubau in the form of an acoustic corridor. The time structure of the week seems to disintegrate almost playfully. What if Sunday did come after Monday? What if the week had eight days instead of seven? Ultimately, in the midst of this constant stream of voices, we find ourselves questioning our own perception of the relativity of time that we so casually take for granted in all its profundity and banality. Nauman created Days for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.

Two black-clad female performers roll evenly around their own body axes on a surface subdivided into sixteen fields. Their linked hands serve to orient them in the circle, like the point of a compass. Occasionally losing each other, the actors continue their circles until, after a good half an hour, they begin to slow down and eventually lie there exhausted.

This work was originally created for the 10th Tokyo Biennale (1970), where it was presented in black and white on two monitors. Nauman reprised and updated the same dispositive for his exhibition “Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens” at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), but integrated more recent technological devices. In addition to repeating the original performance, the installation also plays with a number of other repetitions and duplications. For instance, the sixteen-field grid seen in the video is doubled in the grid outlined in tape on a wrestling mat that serves as projection surface, while the rotation of the camera echoes the centrifugal movement of the performance itself. The rotation of the direct view from above, both clockwise and anticlockwise, accelerates or slows the evenly paced rolling of the dancers’ bodies. Their body movements and the movements of the camera make for a bewildering freeze-frame: are the performers rolling on the spot? Or is the floor revolving beneath them? Can movement be standstill?