The Clock (2010)

Interesting facts

The Clock is a film by video artist Christian Marclay. It is a looped 24-hour video supercut of scenes from film and television that feature clocks or timepieces. The artwork itself functions as a clock: its presentation is synchronized with the local time, resulting in the time shown in a scene being the actual time.

Production

The Clock was conceived in 2005 while Marclay was working on the video score Screen Play. He realised that he needed a way for musicians to synchronise with film footage. An assistant at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center brought him footage of clocks, and Marclay began wondering if it was possible to find footage of every minute of the day. He kept the idea secret for several years, concerned that someone else would poach his idea.

The first several months of production were intended to show that Marclay would be able to find enough material to achieve his vision. White Cube helped him assemble a team of six people to watch DVDs and copy scenes with clocks or time. Marclay himself was often unfamiliar with the source works. They used a Google Spreadsheet to record and search through clips.

After six months, Marclay presented White Cube with several extended sequences, confident that he would eventually be able to finish the project. The footage began taking up too much capacity, so he worked on two Power Mac G5s with footage split by time of day. Marclay organised files by hour, which became like chapters for him. Each folder suggested different themes to him, allowing him to form loose narratives.

In mid 2010, Marclay recruited Quentin Chiappetta, a sound designer with whom he had worked before, to work on the audio for The Clock. He saved files to disc and sent them to Chiappetta so that the films' soundtracks could be equalised. By September, Marclay realised that hundreds of the audio transitions were lacking, with White Cube set to premiere The Clock the following month.

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