THE CLOCK COMBINES THOUSANDS OF FILM CLIPS INTO A 24-HOUR REAL-TIME MONTAGE.
Christian Marclay’s popular 24-hour montage of clips from the history of cinema examines the mysteries of time,
We all know time is of the essence, but what is the essence of time? That is a mystery addressed by many artists, including Christian Marclay in his 24-hour montage of film clips that act as a clock in real time.
The Clock is a minuteby-minute march of time through cinematic history in which every clip shows a clock or has someone or something making a reference to time. It is showing at the Musée d’art contemporain, and if the first clock you see on the screen upon entering the viewing room says 2:30, that’s what time it is. The work is called a montage for its time sequences and a collage for the breadth of its source material — thousands of clips from hundreds of films.
Marclay’s work is a computer program, and the MAC follows his instructions in showing it in a space for 80 people, 45 of them on couches. It will be shown in its entirety Saturday through Sunday, starting at 11 a.m., as part of Nuit blanche, and again March 7 to 8, April 4 to 5 and April 19 to 20.
The Clock earned Marclay a Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, and it’s been a big draw wherever it has been shown since. The National Gallery of Canada acquired it jointly with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and takes it on the road, this time to Montreal.
The Clock is not so much suggestive of time as it is locked into every moment of time, as measured by its arbitrary division into minutes and hours. Time is a tyrant and Marclay displays a mesmerizing succession of clocks, around which a never-conclusive narrative is suggested.
The Clock keeps raising and dashing expectations of a dramatic conclusion. Time marches on, constantly changing direction.
The film clips do not pass in a blur, for which I was thankful during my hours watching The Clock. The clips usually run several seconds, but some go on for as long as a minute.
And the clips always appear at the time they were used in the film, the Swiss-born artist said in a phone interview from his studio in London.
Film is connected both to collective memory and to how an individual person remembers a movie, Marclay said. “I had to respect that.”
An image instantly conjures the film it was taken from, but its audio track is mutable.
Marclay, who was a sound artist before video editing became accessible and affordable, held The Clock together by altering the soundtrack to ease transitions and by stretching the sound of one scene to the next. He even created new sounds as needed.
“Sound is more flexible.” he said. “It’s easier with sound to create a sense of continuity.”
Continuity and rhythm are key to understanding The Clock. A man checks a watch and opens a door, where someone from another movie is waiting. Another door opens to where a female prisoner is being prepared for execution. A clock strikes the hour. A new drama appears to be building. People from several movies are running through the streets.
But nothing is resolved, and that is partly because time-specific moments are often the most banal moments of a film, Marclay said. Sound editing can create tension from activities as ordinary as waking up, but they remain moments when people are doing little but watching the clock.
“I like the moments in between the actions,” he said.
Sometimes they are long moments. Films compress time for dramatic effect — for instance, reducing the time bank robbers are in place to a few seconds. But Marclay robs the scene of its drama by returning to the same waiting characters in the real time indicated by the clock.
Meanwhile, the viewer’s life has become entangled in the narrative. Movies usually provide an escape from real time, but The Clock is a constant reminder of the passage of time.
“What’s on screen reinforces your awareness of your daily schedule,” Marclay said. The movie starts when you arrive, he added. And “I’m not telling you when to leave.”
The Clock should be most enjoyable for people with a broad knowledge of film history. But Marclay’s choice of banal moments over memorable scenes disturbed Richard Brody of The New Yorker.
Marclay “provides illustrations of a visual vernacular — of framing, costume, design, light, gesture and performance — that reduce the world of movies to their lowest common denominator, the stylization and falsification of commonplace activities in the interest of narrative drama,” Brody wrote in 2012.
For Brody, the biggest sin was that Marclay “doesn’t seem to love movies.” (Marclay has told other interviewers that he doesn’t see a lot of movies.)
Brody lauded Chris Marker’s A Grin Without a Cat and Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma for giving film collages a commentary.
By those standards, Marclay is a popular entertainer. But he makes no apologies.
“The more familiar the material and the references are to a wider audience, the more interesting” it is, he said in the interview.
The MAC has installed Marclay’s piece within its Collages: Gesture and Fragments exhibition, but some of Adrian Paci’s pieces in the adjoining gallery contrast better with The Clock.
Paci also focuses on in-between moments in some of his video works, but he slows time to reveal the drama of a moment of transition. The chosen moments, signified by a handshake or a bride’s farewell to her family, are also banal.
Olivia Boudreau, who has a solo exhibition at Concordia’s Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, also examines the seemingly banal. She even has her own lengthy reflection on time: Box, a 22-hour record of a horse in its stall.
All but one of 13 videos in Oscillations of the Visible: Olivia Boudreau, a survey of 10 years of her work, are long takes of simple actions.
Boudreau won the city’s Prix Pierre-Ayot for a young artist in 2011, the year that she exhibited a video at the Quebec Triennial of five women in a steam room, alternately obscured by vapour and revealed by its dissipation.
Boudreau’s work is about the visible and how it exists through time — and it requires time to view, curator Michèle Thériault said. “Time is extended in her work, raising awareness. You become hyperconscious of the visible.”
Simple actions, like a horse standing in a stall, become strange when examined, Bou- dreau said in an interview. “We take a lot for granted; we lose the capacity to be surprised” by daily life.
Femme allongée is Boudreau’s first video to use actors and cross-cut editing. A woman lies on a bed covered with a sheet and various individuals come to look at, wash or embrace her.
No words are spoken and it’s unclear if the woman is dead or alive. The ambiguities leave space for the viewer’s interpretation, Boudreau said.
Neither Boudreau nor Paci will beat Marclay for pure enjoyment and spectacle, but theirs may be the deeper works.
The Clock continues until April 20 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 185 Ste-Catherine St. W. For more information, visit macm.org.
Oscillations of the Visible:
Olivia Boudreau continues until April 12 at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. For more information, visit ellengallery.concordia.ca.
The two-week Art Souterrain festival opens Saturday, on the occasion of Nuit blanche, in the underground network of 15 downtown buildings connected by tunnels and five métro stations (Place des Arts, McGill, Bonaventure — where performances will take place Saturday evening — Square Victoria and Place d’Armes).
About 100 artists will create installations that explore the theme of Foundations.
Art Souterrain continues until March 16. For more information, visit artsouterrain.com or montrealenlumiere.com/nuit-blanche.