The art work I choose...

I have chosen Christian Marclay's The Clock as the work that I am going to write about. It is a 24-hour- art installation with thousands of video clips fitted in. The clock is really as its named---an accurate timepiece. Time is conveyed through dialogues, watches or clocks shown on screen. Marclay spent 2 years to work on this massive project with six assistants, looking for appropriate video clips in movies and methods to link them up seamlessly. It seemed to be a complicated work, and it is! Even The Gardian sees it this way.


'The most staggering, complex thing made by any artist so far this century.'

Adrian Searle, The Gardian

I have thought of choosing a work that is easier to access than this, as it is only available in some museums overseas. And it seems impossible for me to take a complete look of the work. However, when I started doing some research on this art piece, I thought: Time is the precious thing that everyone cherishes. At that Instant, it became the work I chose.
We are experiencing time everyday. However, without looking at our watches, we can barely feels it sneaks away. Especially in the cinema, even though the duration of the movie is printed on the film ticket, several hours in the dark room passes like a few seconds. This is what makes The Clock unique. You are watching an enchanting movie while feeling the ticking of the time.

It is a timepiece, is it? The time in the film becomes fictional (Bradshaw, 2011). It is telling you the time but actually it is not. When you watch the work, you will not discover it is acknowledging you the time, 11:07pm, but a simple visual image. To me, I can only have a look on the masterpiece through Youtube, for like, 4 minutes. But when it’s announcing the time minutes by minutes, it feels less likely as the feeling when you look at the clock. The Clock indeed is telling you the time, but it feels like not.

Here comes the most interesting part of this work. The installation was exhibited in Ohio, New York, London, Ottawa, and many other cities. They are all bustling and hustling regions where people compete with time everyday. Yet, many of them line up for hours to watch Marclay’s work. Some of them even spent a whole day to watch The Clock from the beginning to the end. Why is it so fascinating/ attractive?

This work is interesting, plus, thought provoking. There is one Chinese proverb I think describes this work perfectly.

'One minute on stage comes with ten years practicing off stage.'

Marclay used 3 years just to complete a 24 hours movie. Spending time everyday to do a repetitive routine to make his instant feeling become real. It is very much similar to our daily lives. Dancers practice everyday for a 2-3 minutes performance on stage. Students study for years hoping to pass the exam. Lecturers spend days to prepare for a power point slides to give students an interesting lecture. But the case is a little bit different. A student gets a certificate even though he did not do well in the exam, what if the work of an artist is not ‘admired’?

Christian Marclay has put himself on bet. If people had not accepted The Clock, the time he put on it would have been a waste. Indeed, before composing this work, he is already a renowned visual contemporary artist, what he does will be the focus of the people and art lovers. But what if he isn’t? This is life. You will never know such a move will cause you what kind of destiny. Does Steve Jobs know the calligraphy he had learnt will become the font in Mac? Only the future can tell.

These are the things I concern about The Clock, which is worthy to dig further.

The clock is seen to be a contemporary art. Through its media, we know that it is composed of video clips. Video clips from both digital cameras and film camera. This is very much different from those arts in the old days, using film cameras to take photos and give out in 16 films per second or 24 films per second. 

The context of the work is ‘contemporary’ too. Marclay presented this movie by editing movie clips from thousands of different movies, combining them together to become a whole 24 hours movie. This is an action of reconstructing other’s work, which is different from the filming industry: film for the real things. For example, filming a running horse. The Clock is available at the museum,  free of charge. This also expresses the 'deframe' theme of contemporary art. People sit on the sofa, lay down comfortably to enjoy this new form of art, which makes it observer-friendly.

There is another artwork that is related to The Clock, which is Tehching Heish’s Time Clock Piece. It is a video composed of thousands of photos of the artist punching the clock every once an hour for a year. This performing artist even cut his hair to proof the time passes throughout the one- year- performance. The reason why I chose this work to relate to The Clock is that, both of them have the theme of Time.The Clock is an accurate timepiece, synchronizing the time when you have real time visit. Whereas Heish’s work is simply about the time passes freely. We can see that in both works, artist use their own method to show the sneak of time. Marclay uses loads of movie clips from some totally unrelated films to tell people about the minute passing of time and Heish uses his own image to show the hour passes by another.

Although they have similar themes, their media is different. The Clock is a video based work. Yet, Time Clock Piece is photo based. Heish spent a year with no more than 59 minutes of sleep everyday, just to punch the clock, to show people about the theme of his work. Heish thinks that people have their accomplishments judges by how long they take. This is another relation between the two works.

Heish's One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece)

It is the social aspect that the two work touches. Marclay spent three years to finish the work. It is such a long period of time. How many three years do we have in lives? People think it is a masterpiece not only because of the accuracy of time the video synchronized, but also the length of the movie. No one has ever watched a 24 hours movie, has it? This is exactly what Time Clock Piece conveys. Accomplishments judged by how long they take. We cannot deny that we are attracted to watch the video because of the ‘long-time-effort’ made by the artist.

To conclude, it is the media and context that makes The Clock a contemporary art. And because of it's message conveyed, I decide to work on it in my final report.

Please click to enjoy the Time Clock Piece.

IF accomplishments are really judged by how long they take.... then the hours spent on this are way too less, comparing to the two artist's work :P

Reference

Bradshaw, P. (2011, April 07). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/apr/07/christian-marclay-the-clock

http://www.mca.com.au/exhibition/christian-marclay-the-clock/

http://bigthink.com/Picture-This/is-christian-marclays-the-clock-still-a-modern-masterpiece-if-nobodys-seen-it

http://www.gwarlingo.com/2012/christian-marclays-the-clock-does-the-24-hour-artwork-live-up-to-its-hype/

http://www.moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=62

http://performancelogia.blogspot.hk/2008/01/performing-life-work-of-tehching-hsieh.html