The Clock is a 24-hour single-channel montage constructed from thousands of moments of cinema and television history depicting the passage of time. Marclay has excerpted each of these moments from their original contexts and edited them together to create a functioning timepiece synchronized to local time wherever it is viewed.
Time can be seen as an irrelevant glimpse behind the shot, while sometimes it can drive the action and it’s referenced the dialogues. Generally time follows actions (or likewise): there are lots of shots of people in bed or waking up during nocturnal hours.
Sometimes time turns out to be ambiguous, like in the case of broken watches (what’s the time so?), or becomes entirely fictional, documenting an aleatory passage of time as a mosaic of actions.
Just like in the earliest Marclay’s experiences as a pioneering turntablist where he juxtaposed sounds and records to create a hearing collage.
This piece won Marclay a Gold Lion at Venice Biennale 2011
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snFPsCfvcJA
Read more:
White Cube
Christian Marclay Mini Documentary
Leave a Reply