watching time pass; The Clock in Boston

We were in Boston and I managed to spend some time with The Clock at the Museum of Fine Arts.  I previously made a lengthy post on Christian Marclay winning The Golden Lion award and his exhibit of The Clock in Venice, Italy.  The work functioned as I imagined, but experiencing it in person builds a new layer of memory and gravitational pull worth having. 

I tried giving the baby head sculpture at the back MFA entrance a drink of water.

I came and went from the gallery at different times on two different days to sit through a few combined hours of the piece.  I recommend having this kind of time to go in and out of this piece, partly because it is a 24 hour piece but also because you have the leisure to go in and out of it and reflect a bit.

I watched it during different times of day to study the structure.  Would the 'story' shift according to the hour?  For example, would afternoon rush hour in real life have a similar tension or reference in The Clock?  Indeed, yes, it does. Everyone is running late, of course. The constant building of tension, with moving rather than fixed camera shots, is the repeating treatment of The Clock. At first there is hardly a dull moment. Dramatic moments build by placing, obviously, dramatic moments from very different films next to one another.  Once you fall into the groove of the pattern, even if you recognize there is a pattern, you enter a zone of suspended time.  It's the quintessential homage, and simultaneously critique, of a time arts piece.      

Because the story isn't linear, the viewer can't expect or watch for a conventional outcome like the hero saves the day for example. All of the memories of scenes from different movies get jumbled together bringing all their emotional baggage with them.  Humor, thrills, lurking dangers, disappointments and losses.  At the same time they cancel each other out into a numb sensation. Instead the viewer expects the rhythm of story in a general experiential way. Conflicts build to climaxes and then comes resolution, but extended into a 24 hour experience.  And while in the midst of this extended experience critiquing time, a block of scenes underscore the viewer's anticipation of drama or action or whatever is coming next with sequences from movies of characters waiting.

If one imagines setting out to do a project such as this, where you pull scenes from existing movies whenever a clock is pictured or time is referenced, it seems rather simple.  If it were only to stop there, that might be all there is to it.  However The Clock has a smooth, more seamless editing treatment than one would expect from Marclay, considering the purity of his early works like the vinyl records cut and glued back together then played with leap-frog sounds of each separate record over the other. Whereas in The Clock, audio is layered from the coming scene or parallel story giving a fluidity that his vinyl record pieces have not.  This could be due to the skill of the video editors he commissioned for The Clock, but as such a precise artist in his other works, I credit him with the conscious decision to create a more seamless work here.

The choice of each motion picture clip moves the piece forward as well.  The motion, momentum and gestures of rhythm are more frequent than a static shot of a landscape or object.  A hand reaches, a head turns, a door closes. A 007 sequence builds suspense with running, climbing, driving, and finally a knocking over of clocks. Drama is reconstructed with positive reactions, confusing and leveling our memory in order to jar us into focusing on the now.  The challenge of such a large-scale construction, it would seem, is the constant (re)building of tension over the course of a full day.  From my various visits at different hours of the day, it appears to succeed in doing exactly that. 

Conceptually, The Clock, covers the gamut.  It's one big fat pun on time for starters. Clocks, watches, pendulums, tic-tock and so on. While hammering the idea that 'time is short' and constantly checking and reminding us of the time (that corresponds with real time), the piece also encourages and lulls viewers into losing track of time for a full 24 hours. Or as many hours as a movie watcher can allow themselves until finally pulling away. There lies the tension.

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The Clock is on view at the MFA in Boston until the end of December and while you are there be sure to check out an elegant selection of Ellsworth Kelly works all made of wood.


For Rolling Stop's first post on Christian Marclay's video installation, The Clock, see "Seductive and Repulsive at the Same Time" by clicking here.