I recently visited The Power Plant gallery in Toronto, to experience an installation called The Clock. And it was pretty woo-woo crazy. I’m no philosopher and the experience of the thing sort of broke my brain, but I shall try to describe it as a 24-hour-long video in which each minute of the day is depicted in film (sometimes from Hollywood, sometimes from obscure Japanese art films, and all sorts in between). For instance: it shows 2:56pm on your wrist-watch? Then The Clock will be showing a minute of film that features a watch or clock set at 2:56pm. It was, as this review suggests, a project that freakishly “dismantled” my experience of time. And so I tried to make sense of it in my notebook as I watched for an hour one Saturday afternoon. Problem is, I was writing in the dark during an experience that “dismantled” my understanding of the world around me. So unlike when I review notes taken at a concert or play review, and can sort of piece together what I wrote, the notes I took at The Clock are, upon review, totally whack. What follows is my attempt to make sense of the scribbles in my notebook during that time-warpy, mind-melty hour of film.
———
TNY- Time Passing- The Clock * I have no idea what this was referring to. Maybe The New Yorker? Was I supposed to go back and reread the piece about it in The New Yorker?
Denzel, Beatrix, as a movie montage *I really need to start learning to write in complete sentences when taking notes on shizz like this…
Matt Damon is so young! *Yes!?
Fluidity, ethnicity, seamless *I feel like I may have really been on to something here.
Bundle profs fall on rhythm, chess review *Do you think I have the beginnings of a great psychedelic novel, maybe?
Bruce Willis multiple roles *Well, that’s true. He was in it A LOT in the hour between 4-5.
Tension with sound, rhythm *Ooh, I do remember that: Marclay managed to create real emotional swells of tension and release by manipulating the audio levels with overlays.
Other kinds of clocks *Yes! What ABOUT other kinds of clocks? Later in the film, I did experience a minute of a film depicting ancient Indian royalty and their hoarding of elaborate and strange-looking clocks.
Brianna Goldberg 