A two-month deep listening sound installation

St George’s Church, Broad Street, Ramsgate CT11 8QY
Exhibition dates: 02 May – 29 June 2025 ()
Opening times: 12 – 5 pm Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays
Closing performance event: 29 June 2025

Streaming analogue time 24/7 >> sixtybeatsperminute.info

sixty beats per minute transforms St George’s Church in Ramsgate into a musical instrument and time machine. An array of microphones amplify the Benjamin Vulliamy 1829 turret clock to form a multi-channel surround sound installation inside the church. The installation records and reverses time sequentially, creating a live feedback loop between digital and analogue time. Tuned to the resonant frequency of the architecture and matching the tempo of our heart at rest, sixty beats per minute uses a beat known to raise consciousness to create a deep listening experience that reflects on the physical and existential experience of time.

St George’s Church is a prominent and well-loved feature of Ramsgate’s skyline. Its architecturally unique tower acts as both mechanical turret clock, displaying the time to the people of Ramsgate, and as a Lantern Tower, built to aid navigation in the English Channel. When constructed, these technologies signified a fundamental change in the world’s consumption of time, people lost their connection to the rhythms of the sun and the seasons, forced instead to keep pace with time dealt by a mechanical clock. In the 200 years since the introduction of clock towers our relationship to time is ever more sequenced, reaching new levels of invasiveness in the always-on world of global surveillance capitalism. sixty beats per minute makes a direct connection between the mechanics that drove the age of steam with those that drive our current digital age. The installation and live audio stream offer users an authentic analogue fidelity in the mercurial digital age.

Key dates and events:

•       Artist talk at St George’s Yard Sale: Saturday 14th June, 3pm by the artist, Phil Coy and Jemima Brown, Regeneration Officer for St George’s. FREE

•       A+C tour to sixty beats per minute plus St Laurence-in-Thanet and St Augustine’s Church (by Augustus Pugin): Saturday 31st May, 11.30am – 3.30pm. Tickets available from artandchristianity.org/events

•       Closing performance event: Sunday 29th June, 2 – 5pm Phil Coy invites local music producer and UK dub legend Adrian Sherwood and friends to hijack sixty beats per minute. A new composition and live dub remix breaks down the mechanics of the clocks regimented beat. FREE but booking on Eventbrite

Phil Coy is an artist working with a collage of hybrid materials, concepts and processes that oscillate between film, photographic series, sculpture, site sensitive sound works, public works, text works and performance. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including Matt’s Gallery; South London Gallery; Royal Observatory Greenwich; FACT, Liverpool; Whitechapel Gallery; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; BFI London Film Festival; Focal Point Gallery; LOOP, Barcelona; Volt, Bergen, Norway; Whitstable Biennale; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; Aldeburgh Music festival; Artprojx Cinema, New York.

Adrian Sherwood is a pioneer of the Dub sound tape delay techniques and has developed a cult-like following via his experiments in reggae, punk, post-punk and bass music. As the founder of the fiercely independent On-U Sound label he has brought the attention to artists like New Age Steppers, African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate, Creation Rebel and Tackhead.

sixty beats per minute is supported by a series of workshops with local teenage musicians run by the innovative Pie Factory Music exploring relationships between time and music.

St George Ramsgate has Major Church status and has remained in continuous ecclesiastical use throughout its history. In advance of its 200th Anniversary in 2027, a 5-year regeneration initiative, ‘Project 200’, has been working to open this spectacular Grade I listed building for wider community use and is seeking to maximise its potential as a destination for heritage and culture in Thanet.

sixty beats per minute has been commissioned and organised by Art and Christianity (A+C) and St George’s Ramsgate. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and with support from the Diocese of Canterbury and the Parish of St George’s Ramsgate.

Photos by Phil Coy