by Julian Wood
Time is the most important commodity; the essential aspect of our (always temporary) existence. We swim through it as fish inhabit water, and, like fish, we perish when removed from it. Art, religion and philosophy come together in the contemplation of it, and its fascination can never pall.
Around ten years ago, London-based installation artist Christian Marclay put together a work called The Clock. The idea was both simple and profound. He edited together hundreds of clips from films and matched them in real time to the clock appearing in that film for twenty-four hours. Audiences can come and go and experience parts of it or (if they do not have a job) the whole thing. The idea could have been gimmicky but Marclay is a considerable artist and he has made something of lasting beauty that has been touring the world to great acclaim for years.
For the next few weeks the installation is playing at ACMI [Australian Centre for the Moving Image] in Melbourne.
FilmInk spoke to Fiona Trigg, the Acting Senior Curator. ACMI is about to close for a year for extensive renovations and Trigg explains that the work was intended to be a nice way to say goodbye to the old space. They approached the White Cube Gallery in London who represent Marclay (who is Swiss-American but now based in London) hoping to get a turn to show the work after its run at the Tate Gallery in Britain.
“We wanted a work that was free and accessible, and it has been shown all around the world, so we know it would very popular,” says Trigg. Indeed, it is. Just as when it was shown in Sydney (at the MCA in 2007), the work has gathered so much word of mouth that you now have to wait for a seat. The only problem is the work is too mesmerising, so that people who were just popping in, tend to stay for much longer.
Trigg has a theory: “It’s one of those great works that is very accessible and very welcoming. And entertaining and engaging; almost addictive. It has a very easy to grasp underpinning idea but, beyond that idea, there are a whole of lot of other themes and ideas that run under the surface.”
Certain patterns of viewership also seem to emerge. For example, people tend to leave on the half hour or hour mark. Trigg thinks this reflects on the way time is used in film throughout the history of the medium.
“The work has a natural rhythm, it kind of speeds up, if you can say that, around the hour as these are times that are often marked in stories, especially times like midday and midnight.”
The installation is such an elusive mix. It is an artwork, but it can also be viewed as a work of ‘disjointed cinema’, as well as a homage to the medium. When you watch it, you find yourself chasing narratives of the films you recognise so they run in your head in parallel to the text. Trigg has had that experience when seeing the work too. She also calls attention to its monumental skill in editing terms.
“I have said that I see the work as a kind of masterclass in editing. It’s a study in how to edit in a way. The art of editing is joining together disparate bits so that the audience feels they are in one continuous narrative and, there are tricks like the overlapping of sound and so on. He is playing with those conventions.”
The soundtrack in film always joins and smooths the narrative, of course, and Marclay has a relationship to this aspect too. “Because he has a musical background, he composes it in sections. So, he may let a section run because it has a great soundtrack or because it has music he likes.”
She also adds into the conversation the fact that people have a biographical dimension and a long-term relation to the conventions of viewing so that they intuitively know how cinema works, even if this isn’t really conventional cinema.
“Your whole previous experience as a viewer is telling you that this is one continuous work, but of course it’s made up of a whole load of different stories. It is common for people to have a sense of these parallel narratives. You are swept along by the flow and the beautiful way the clips connect. But you are also reminded that you are watching films from different time periods, different styles and traditions and genres and so on. It’s complex but also lyrical in the way that it does that. It is intuitive, it is not jarring. He finds connections between the clips or the actions or the mood. Sometimes the clips are connected by actions and sometimes through mood.”
Perhaps, it is hard to think about time and cinema and life without also touching on the feelings associated with nostalgia. The work is too heterogenous visually to be nostalgic in one sense but, like all great art, people of different ages bring different things to it. Trigg has this add: “People might interpret it differently depending on their own history of cinema, or even their relationship to time. Maybe old people and young people might see it differently. For young people, it’s endurance, ‘how long can I stay?’ But for old people maybe it is a chance to reflect on the passing of time. Their whole lifetime of viewing cinema flashes before their eyes. So, yes, everyone brings a different thing to the work.”
This is a profound work that stays with you once you have seen it. People always say ‘oh you must go and see so and so’, but this is one exhibition/cinematic experience you really don’t want to miss.
