Christian Marclay, The Clock
Portrait photo of Christian Marclay by Josh D.
Christian Ernest Marclay (born 11 January, 1955) is a visual artist and composer, belonging to American and Swiss nationality. Marclay’s work consist of transforming audio and music into visible, physical forms through a prolific range of performances, collages, sculptures, installations, photographs and videos. Marclay is gestured as a pioneer of utilizing gramophone records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collages, he in other words perhaps the ‘unwitting inventor of turntable’ (Critic, Thom Jurek).
The Clock (2010 film)
The Clock is an art installation directed by Christian Marclay, comprising of a 24 hour-looped montage video featuring scenes from film and television that contain clocks or timepieces. The artwork itself functions exactly like a real life clock being synchronized to the real time, which results in the time being shown in the film being the actual time itself.
During the production for the film, The Clock was conceived in 2005 while working on his video score, Screen Play. The idea sprung to him when an assistant brought Marclay, footages of clocks, which made him wonder if it was possible to find footage of every minute of the day.
The Clock reveals its plot largely through the use of cut-away shots. A shot indicating the time is followed up by a reaction shot, capturing a character’s emotional response, often of unease, terror or boredom. The sequence of repeated reactions lacking context ‘comes over as incredibly weird’ draws in the viewers into The Clock’s flow, often experiencing a detached, hypnotic effect as remarked by Critic Petit. Marclay has incorporated symbols of time and death in connecting shots to establishing these themes to being more prominent. Shots of turntables and vinyl records were included not only as a representation of capturing time, but also as a self-reference to his earlier works that used vinyl.
The Revolving City Clock by James Xu, inspired by Christian Marclay's The Clock
In the film I have proposed, I have attempted to replicate similar techniques and camera shots as Marclay has done. Using cut-away shots and focusing my camera on a clock or time piece then gradually zooming out and panning onto the by-passers brings a subtle moving image of people having to travel to other places by the dictation of the clock, acting as an indicator or director, supervising the direction for those bound to time.
Using a mobile phone to capture the scenes gives the audience a more realistic feel, drawing them into the film as if they were the director themselves, taking parts of the city at specifically different times and locations. It encapsulates a portion of the large city and incorporates it into a film enabling the audience to view the city in a small of time without needing to actually spend the time necessary to go around the city.
Reference List
Artnet n.d, Christian Marclay (American born 1955), viewed 13 July 2018, <http://www.artnet.com/artists/christian-marclay/>
Artsy n.d, Christian Marclay Swiss-American, b.1955, viewed 13 July 2018, <https://artsy.net/artist/christian-marclay>
Cunningham John M. , Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. published 31 July, 2014, viewed 13 July 2018, <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christian-Marclay>
Head of Public Relations, Christian Marclay The clock, press release, MAC, 12 February, 2014, viewed 15 July 2018, <https://macm.org/en/press-release/christian-marclay-the-clock/>
Streel, S. & Dahmen, J. 2012, Christian Marclay, weblog, Germ@namur, English section of the University of Namur’s Department of Germanic languages, 29 March, viewed on 15 July 2018, <http://germanamur.blogspot.com/2012/03/christian-marclay.html>
