Still from The Clock (2010) by Christian Marclay

The Clock goes 24 hour at MoMA

The final full-day screening of Christian Marclay's video work takes place this weekend in New York

As you might expect, staging Christian Marclay's 2010 video work, The Clock, poses some fairly unusual challenges. The work, as most of our regular readers know, is a 24-hour collage of film clips featuring clocks, watches or similar time checks. When screened correctly, the work's collection of fictional timings coincide with real-world chronology, to dizzying effect. Little wonder it won a Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Biennale.
However, what's a boon for art lovers can be a bane for curators, gallerists and security personnel, as to view the work in its entirety an institution must stay open for a 24-hour stretch.

 

A 2010 screening of The Clock
A 2010 screening of The Clock

Many who've exhibited the piece have compromised, screening what they can during regular opening hours, with special, one-off all-day-all-night events. New York's Museum of Modern Art held one such screening over the new year period, allowing ticket holders to see in 2013 clock-watching in style.

Now, as this temporary MoMA exhibition draws to a close, the gallery is staging one more Clock marathon, starting this coming Friday to Sunday (Jan 18-20). Keen to see all of what some have called 'a masterpiece of our times'? Check out MoMA's site. Or, to learn more about Marclay himself, consider our appreciation of the multidisciplinary artist's ingenious combinations of sound and vision. Finally, learn a bit more about how the clock got made, with the aid of a few penniless Londoners, in this excellent New Yorker piece.