Bruce Nauman: 'Days' at the ICA, London

American artist Bruce Nauman was mentioned briefly on this blog a few weeks’ back in connection with the screening of his early video and performance art at White Cube Bermondsey. Another strand of the pioneering media artist’s work is on display this week at the ICA in the form of Days (2009), a sound work in the venue’s ground floor gallery.

Installation view of Bruce Nauman’s 'Days', ICA. Photographer: Stephen White. Courtesy of ICA

Londoners might remember Nauman’s sound installation for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2004, Raw Materials, an orchestrated audio collage of pieces from Nauman’s back catalogue. His past verbal works – mainly absurdist combinations of words repeated on a loop – were broadcast from different speakers across the cavernous space, but the installation was so vast that it seemed, to this visitor at least, to lack any overall unity.

Installation view of Bruce Nauman’s 'Days', ICA. Photographer: Stephen White. Courtesy of ICA.

Days (2009) is a more accessible introduction to the artist’s sound art, as it revolves around a single theme – the days of the week. Fourteen paper-thin panel speakers are suspended in the gallery in seven pairs, one speaker opposite another. A different voice emanates from each pair, reciting the days of the week in seemingly random order.

When you stand in front of each pair of speakers, you hear loudly in the foreground a voice saying, for example, ‘Monday, Thursday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday’ in such a random way that you think about the utter arbitrariness of these words that are so central to the measurement of time in our daily lives.

Installation view of Bruce Nauman’s 'Days', ICA. Photographer: Stephen White. Courtesy of ICA.

But as you walk through the space between the seven pairs, it becomes clear that the work is a spatial as well as a sonic experience – a sound sculpture. The foreground voice is always accompanied by a cacophony of other voices from the speakers that are behind and in front of you as you walk. You listen to the days disappearing into the distance and anticipate the days you are about to encounter: a metaphor for our lived experience, in which the passing of time and the arbitrary words we use to describe it never dilute our longing for the past or for the future.

• Bruce Nauman's 'Days' is at the ICA until 16 September 2012

Sam Phillips is a London-based arts journalist and contributor to RA Magazine

• Royal Academy of Arts