Phlegm
Kerry Langsdale
Kerry Langsdale is a Nottingham-based multidisciplinary artist and philosopher. They hold a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Nottingham and currently work at the intersection of artistic practice and academic research. Langsdale is the founder of The Art of Time Project, an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together philosophy, contemporary art, and other fields to investigate time and temporality.
Langsdale's work encourages shared reflection on the nature of time, and how we experience and understand temporality. Through live performance, interactive installations, and workshops, they create environments that invite audiences to engage directly with philosophical ideas, creating spaces where time can be felt, measured, or disrupted. Positioned between contemporary art and philosophy, the work brings thinking, making, and collective temporal experience into close conversation.
The Four Humours: Phlegm
Thief of Time reimagines an ancient water clock, the clepsydra, as a shared meditation on the passage of time and our relationship with time's flow. Two glass vessels: one suspended above, steadily releasing water; the other below, containing the flow of water, measuring its passage. This flow marks the duration of a participant’s presence.
Throughout the exhibition, visitors are invited to interact with the piece: to lift the water from the lower vessel, time once belonging to someone else, and return it to the upper one. This simple act becomes a quiet theft. One person's spent time becomes the raw material for another's. Time, once passed, is repurposed. In this way, Thief of Time becomes a collective act of remembrance and an invitation to dwell in the present, not as a fixed point, but as a current carried by many hands.
Each of these interactions is photographed, with only the participant’s hands visible. These anonymous images form a growing archive throughout the gallery, a record of stolen time, reclaimed time. The photographs represent a linear temporal narrative, while the act of using and reusing time through the clepsydra creates a temporal cycle.
The work draws on the phlegmatic humour, the humour of water. Phlegm was associated with slowness, depth, and endurance. It was understood not as inert, but as steady and receptive. Its temperament is calm and inward, attentive and unhurried. Thief of Time inhabits this through its cool flow and its quiet repetition. It encourages participation without spectacle. Time here is not owned but shared.
The work invites a soft attention and a willingness to linger. Ego is reduced or gently set aside. The photographs record not faces but hands, placing the focus on touch, gesture, and the collective rhythm of the piece. This is not time captured, but time held. The installation resists urgency and finality. Instead, it listens to what flows, what returns.
Rooted in both artistic practice and philosophical inquiry, Thief of Time reflects the wider context of the artist’s work at the intersection of these disciplines. It is part of an ongoing exploration of temporality through shared experience, shaped by a phlegmatic mode of being: contemplative, fluid, and quietly enduring.
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