From time to time, you might notice a shot of a clock in a movie.In a film like "Back to the Future," they're key to the plot; lightning strikes the clock tower at exactly 10:04 p.m.
But often, clocks are just ticking away in the background, or not ticking at all, like the watch from "Pulp Fiction," stopped at 11:46.Compile enough of these seemingly minute details, and minutes can turn into hours, spanning decades of moving-image history.That is the case with artist Christian Marclay's "The Clock," a 24-hour film comprised entirely of clips from movies and television."It's not to create a trick or to make you forget about time," Marclay said.
"I want you to be totally conscious about it throughout."Currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "The Clock" runs on a continuous loop, synced to the precise time of day.When the kids in "The Breakfast Club" are whistling at 11:31 a.m., it's 11:31 in real life.
An hour later, "Rain Man" announces "Oh, it's 12:31." Minute by minute, the footage functions as an actual clock.Stuart Comer, the chief curator of media and performance at MoMA, calls watching Maclay's mash-up an uncanny experience."[You're] watching some of your favorite movies and realizing that it's telling the time that you're living in right now," Comer said.
"It's eliminating that barrier between you and the world on-screen."The effort that it took with Christian and the team of researchers locating 'The Clock' footage and all of these different clips is somewhat superhuman," he said.When Marclay won best artist for "The Clock" at the 2011 Venice Biennale, it turned him into a contemporary art superstar.
But the 70-year-old first made a name for himself decades earlier as part of New York's underground DJ scene."In those days, you would find records … people would put them in their trash," he said.
Born to an American mother and Swiss father, Marclay was raised in Switzerland and moved to the U.S.to attend art school in the...