Art That Moved Me: Christian Marclay—The Clock

I regularly think back to this amazing piece of artwork I saw a few years ago, and wanted to capture my feelings about it. It is a 24 hour-long movie that is a collection of clips and images of clocks, timed to the time of day. It is a super interesting look at movie and TV culture and also functions as a working time-piece. Throughout the movie, the current time is displayed in various ways - maybe the LED display on a microwave in this clip, and a pocket watch in the next one. I was completely transfixed on the movie, yet still totally tethered to the current time in the real world. This installation at the SFMOMA, was being used as a count-down timer for the museum closing down for renovations (they are complete and the museum is back open). I still think about this movie all the time, and I saw it almost 10 years ago.

The Tate London describes the Clock this way:

The art is a 24 hour long looping movie that is a super clever, the website describes it as:Constructed from thousands of film clips indicating the passage of time, The Clock (2010) excerpts these moments from their original contexts and edits them together to form a 24-hour video montage that unfolds in real time.

Checkout a Clip

I found a clip of the movie available online. For full effect, and to respect the art, you should start this at 3:04. This clip is delightful, and has a lot of clever callbacks in the short 10 minute run-time. For example at 3:10, there is a scene from the Movie “3:10 to Yuma” (which is pretty obvious, but also is so much fun). I won’t give any other spoilers.

Articles from: Tate Modern and SFMoma further discuss the nuances of this artwork.