THE TICKING CLOCK


‘Time, he's waiting in the wings. He speaks of senseless things. His script is you and me, boys’

'Time' David Bowie


Time is the most fascinating of all aspects of existence so that any exploration of the subject from Proust to HG Wells is bound to fascinate. Time is what we are born into, the place where we live, the stage on which we act out the drama of our lives. Time is invariably the boss, it removes beauty and agility, brains and brawn and, or so it feels, slips away ever faster just as we realise how precious it is. We live in it but cannot grasp it or make it change direction.  Time is dying is dissolving as we breath, it is constantly slipping through our fingers.  We are not killing time; time is killing us.

Twenty four hours, as James Joyce, Malcolm Lowry and others have depicted, can represent a lifespan, and twenty-four hours is the subject of Christian Marclay’s installation at the Tate Modern. simply entitled 'Clock.'  Consisting of a film montage that viewers watch in real time and which spans twenty-four hours. Thus if you visit at 3: pm you will enter the exhibition space as the numerous clocks depicted on film show 3: pm.
The dazzling montage, constantly shifting, changing genre’s, from Western to thriller, from costume drama to comedy, alternating between a terrible urgency, boredom, frustration and consummation. It is a cinematic feast traversing cinema history, switching between black and white film noir to more contemporary scenes, from Will Hayes to Jeff Goldblum. The sense of time passing pervades the cinema, as people come and go, screen characters check their watches, tension mounts, then a moments relief, tea and boredom.
It is, I suspect, impossible to leave the installation without feeling something of the tyranny of the clock. Noo questions about the nature of time are answered, of course, these are left hanging in the air, you have passed the time and now it is time to go home, to eat, to do some shopping, - your watch, or more probably these days, the digital clock on your mobile phone, - tells you this, and, perhaps, if you are like me, you also decide to revisit the exhibition again soon, I mean later, at another time...


CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK IS ON AT THE TATE MODERN UNTIL 20 JANUARY 2019




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