CHRISTIAN MARCLAY
I don’t normally choose to go and see films but a friend recomended this and I went to see it without having read anything about it. I really enjoyed it. Christian Marclay had put together 24 hours of film clips with reference to clocks or time to create an entertaining new narrative about time.
As I didn’t know anything about the piece it took me a little while to work out what was happening. I arrived at 5.15pm and for the first 5 mins thought he had discovered that a lot of films used the clocks at 5.15pm and maybe it was some kind of insider knowledge. However by 5.25 I had realised that time had moved on and checked my watch to see if it was real time and it was of course. But I didn’t of course know at this time that it was a 24 hour film, and I sat there for an hour wondering how long the film was. I actually had to go and meet someone so left at 6.15 and discovered that it was a 24 hr film. I went back two more times 6 -7pm and 10 -12pm. It was so interesting to see how different each time slot was. I thought the way he linked one clip to the next was very clever and effective. I will visit the film again in the morning in Nottingham next week.
White cube say “‘The Clock’ plays with how audiences experience narrative in cinema, examining the conventions and devices through which filmmakers create a persuasive illusion of duration. When watching a film, an audience is removed from normal time and swept up in a new register that corresponds to the narrative at hand. ‘The Clock’ transforms this condition of cinema: time, in this case, corresponds precisely to the actual time beyond the work. The audience will have the peculiar awareness of experiencing a fictional event, or countless events, at what appears to be the same time as when they watch it in the gallery.”
