In his profoundly captivating video work "The Clock," Christian Marclay wants us to see and hear the relentless tick-tock going on within the eidetic space of the movies. The thousands of shots he has spliced together from the history of cinema depict little else but scenes of characters checking the time, fretting about it, or surrounded by bell towers or digital clock radios that ground the action on the screen within the cycle of a fictive day and night.
The result is a functional collage that is figuratively and literally a timepiece. All the images and sounds that the artist (and his six assistants) have scavenged from the archives of world cinema refer to a particular minute and hour. These are then synchronized to the time zone in each venue where it is presented.
For instance, the bitter flashback in "Casablanca" of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) waiting like a fool in the rain with Sam (Dooley Wilson) for Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), so the trio could flee the Nazi occupation of Paris, includes a shot of a clock on the train platform that reads 4:56. The audience for "The Clock" watches this scene, too, at exactly 4:56 p.m.
Every minute of the 24-hour video is constructed with this same precision so that we experience it as a cinephile's mix-tape as well as a working chronometer. There is no need to check your watch during a screening; it tells you the correct time outside the walls, day or night.
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