Christian Maclay's 24 hour screening of the The Clock.

24 HOUR CLOCK RECOLLECTION

Christian Maclay's The Clock is a collection of many thousands of movie clips spliced together depicting, from the history of cinema, scenes of short clips related to "Time," clocks, watches, digital time pieces, characters checking, fretting, running to or away from the passing of time. This fast moving collage is literally a working timepiece so no need to check your watch during the screening; it tells you the correct time outside the cold walls, day and night.

Jess and I are some of the few people who have seen the film in its entirety. We decided to take on the challenge of watching the 24 hour screening, without a loo break, food and or water because we felt this work deserved it. We were also curious as to whether we would be able to actually do it? As part of this 'Art' challenge we both made notes throughout and what follows is an ongoing 'real' time summary of the experience……

This is a collection of thoughts, ideas, quotes that I made while watching Christian Marclay 24-hour screening of the 24 Hour Clock at noon on Saturday, October 22nd to noon on Sunday, 23rd October 2011 with my team mate Jess Young. We enter the darkened auditorium at 11.55 and settle down immediately in the front row. The seats are hard and there is a chill in the air. I wonder just how long 24 hours might be, I feel excitement, bafflement and fear all in the same moment and I wonder just how long I am going to be able to stay?

I feel like we are being drawn into a rushing stream, the face of which is a numbered clock face chiming waves with flurries of machine gun tocks and ticks.

Count down or count up?

Head shots of Charles Bronson keep popping up but they do not seem to be  indicating a direct connection to 'time' until the third 'pop up'. Is the artist warming us up, making us curious and questioning  within the first half hour.

Music starts before the clip it belongs to ….I hear before I see and realise it belongs elsewhere, like Charles.

12.17pm  Quote:  "Time goes on and on, it goes by every second."

12.18pm  Quote:   "Time enough at last." 

(Can we find a list of all the clips he used and the names of the films they are from?)

12.25pm  I am beginning to really become aware of the time going past minute by every single minute. I'v been here for 25 minutes and realise I will be here for another 23 hours and 35 minutes. God

Will, how Will I make it? 

Try and name the films you know and the time they are shown and one day watch them all. How long that would that take? I can't take my eyes off the screen, can't miss anything so many clips!

The Big The BAd And The Ugly 12.05 Charles Bronson, beautiful face, fell in love with him as a child when he was Apache Indian.

12.30 FILM : Rainman

(Love it when it is just the sound of the ticking)

12.37 FILM : Live and Let Live 007

12.39 TV : The Office

Richard Gere has aged 20 years between 12.05 and 12.39 and for me this feels like I have been here for 20 years?

12.41 FILM : Clockwork Orange

Sometimes its difficult to know where one clip finishes and another starts.

Sometimes the clips have a continuity over time and they draw you into a narrative like a film would and then the clips drift off again into other worlds,  genres, colour, subjects, scenes, decades, language and time 

12.47 FILM : The Madness Of Sister George.

Sometimes overlaying one sound from one clip with that of another. This mixing and overlaying of disparate elements creates new narratives which  captivates me on all levels.  A film made of other clips,other music, that tell a new story. It also creates the potential for a new film.

Quote " I don't know what time it is?" (very funny!)

I love the way it builds up to the hour by increasing the amount of times you see the time in various ways.

1.55pm  Quote" We can't eat now we're in the middle of a field." (John Cleese)

2 O'CLOCK : A very romantic rainy rainy moment in a gazebo…..

2.01pm  FILM : The Amazing Mr Ripley

2.10pm  " What will the future be like in 50 years time?" (HG Wells)

2.12pm  "Try  again!"

2.13pm  "Make Time Stand Still"

2.16pm  "When My Clock Stops Ticking I'll Die"

(2.30 pm I wonder what happens in the lift after the two people get in?Lifts, doors and windows are portals in this dark cold world. I'm Cold, its cold 

Each  hour will have one film that repeats itself during the hour with maybe four clips of the scene progressing which is cleverly satisfying by brain. In this hour it's a cowboy film.

2.35pm " Time is a personal thing"

Never have I been more aware of my own mortality, the sound of ticking passing moments and how very male directed these clips are, male perspective, male gaze, male is omnipresent, God this world is so predictably black and white, literally…

I am really enjoying the juxtaposition of sound especially when the orchestra's arrive and entertain one clip.

2.15pm Suddenly there will be a theme explored like cars or rain ticking or food which will last a while but not sure how long a while is maybe a minute. 

3 O'CLOCK : 3 hours done only 21 hours to go Jess has been down on the floor it feels so hard underfoot she be a brave  hard bodied soul. I want something to look forward to (Ha how amazingly optimistic)later much much later after 11 when my body feels the horizontal pull of night and desperate need for change 

3.20pm FILM : Mary Poppins

I can smell coffee fucking hell I want some Can I have one please and pee in my panties….

3.32pm  "Time is Short"

3.39pm  "Do Not Squander Time, It's the Stuff Life is Made of."

(3.44pm An opening door opens into another room from another film)

3.53pm : It is creating the illusion in this count down to 4 o'clock of time flashing by like a strobe, Tick/Tock.

4 O'CLOCK : " Well I Guess my Time is Up."

Only 20 hours to go????!!!!! Is this artist trying to tell us something about our lives?I squander my life every minute and being here just proves it….Shit is this an epiphany moment shit its just gone remember this….

4.05pm : White numbers on clock face, white matches, white chess pieces

4.10pm FILM : Amelie.

(I wonder how I will feel at 4.10 am Will I be doing a Beatrix potter or floating around this space with a brolly in my hands doing a Mary Poppins impression? God my mind is playing tricks and doing cartwheels and yet here I am dead still fuck off flask stop being my temptation.)

4.17pm : FILM ; Volver

4.20pm FILM : The Orgasm clip

4.25pm : FILM : Gallipoli . (Wonder how many clips there are in one hour? Shall I count between 5 and 6pm? Definitely the exciting clips lead up to and close to the hour. The energy speeds up or becomes more dramatic like it is important and in a way it is to me  because I will be one more hour closer to finishing this task so that I am free to do exactly the same in my other life   umh….

"I Need You to Give Me back My Time to Me."

4.58pm : "No Time No Choice"

20 clips 5 minutes/240 per hour. 4/240=560 24/240 6/560=3360////????Shit maths shit lot of clips

5.25pm : "This is the Closest we are Going to get to a Confession."

5.26pm : "When it Come to Time we are prisoners."

6 O'CLOCK : "There'll Still be Time, Have respect for it."

6.18 pm : One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

6.23pm  : Angel Heart…. Johnny

Memories of Richard come and a time long gone with the sound of the notes and the words of the song in my head.

Girl of dreams I love you

honest I do

you are so sweet 

If I could just hold your charms, again in my arms 

then Life would be complete 

Since you've been gone dear, life don't seem the same 

You'll come back again.

And after all said and done there's only one

Girl of my dreams 

its you.

6.30pm : Thelma and Louise they loved each other, I cried

6.31pm : Cat People once my favourite film, beautiful black Panther, Natashia Kinski and music.

6.45pm : Breakfast at Tiffany's Audrey go lightly at dawn, walking the streets of Paris, black evening dress, smoking a cigarette …..ah….

6.55pm  : "What are you Staring at? ------"TIME!"

6.56pm : Dick Tracy.

6.57pm : Kes (O'level english)

7 O'CLOCK : " My Friend Gregory said my times up!"

7.15pm Fatal Attraction (boiling bunnies)

8.30pm : "Time and life are one." To kill a mocking bird, laurie lee (brillbook )

9.05pm : Still going good, Time is just "kissing" by because tis the kissing theme

9.10pm : Horror movies are beginning with Freddy but we don't see him we just know he's there…..

9.21pm : " You Will not learn the Lessons of Time, You are doomed to Learn them."

9.55pm : Timing synchronicity is superb between actions in clips and following through into other types of actions, beautiful harmony and rhythm in this. Heading towards 10 pm going to capture lead up to the hour on film.

12.55am : "What Happened?"

                  "It's a Long Story"

1 AM : Dramatic car crash , really harsh, really real…

BIG BEN CHIMES on the hour I hour gone sometimes quickly mostly slowly.

1.03am : Hunchback Notradame

1.03am : Little Drummer Boy

1.04am Jacky Brown

Tween 1am - 1.15 seemed like an eternity, felt like hours, an age, an eon, forever

13.17 = Time of Death clip.

Characters look and shout through windows onto other scenes at at other people , black and white telephones are answered by technicolour strangers. I am hungry and beginning to salivate when the eating scenes arrive.

I'm in the twilight horizontal zone ………………………………..My body is rigor I think I am going to die of stiffness and cold god for a bed and warmth help us

 in and out of a painful dze hurts in consciousness time is easy when you die in sleep time is monster

3.10am : sex, madness, clocks,clocks clocks arms running backwards, forwards speeding up slowing down, scared, sleepers, tired, people in watery rooms time going coming witching hour strange, surreal monochrome hurting fleeting stiff jess  wake sleep driftringing sideways panting ticking trilling cold bean bagsblackpersonbagbean covet peoples in beds lots and lots of beds kissing fuckinf laughing ringing ringing eyes turning bulging big black round black eyeturning clock face eye bed warm naked bed watch face alarm

Thankgod thank jesus for our praise the lordbeanbags

3.15 am : Lots and lots of clips hundreds of them of people in bed

Wake up work 

7.05am : Factories black and white people clocking in work arriving for work

8.25 am : There are 6 people in here...

8.35 am : Tea glorious tea pots of tea morning tea hot sweet toasty tea…I want a cup of tea never have i wanted a cup of tea so much please  4 hours to go

8.40am : Traffic jams rushing in this hour.

9.30am : Time machine is back must be back in the real, is film the real world?world where time matters and moves

10.10am : Getting married clip.

10.35am : Theme tune to the opening scene to The Piano but no image clip just this exquisite piece of piano music and I remember the scene clearly because of the piano sitting on the deserted sand with her playing it. 

10.45am : "Days, Weeks, Months…..Time!!!!!"

10.48am (I don't know if I can make it I need the loo and time goes real slow when one is concentrating on NOT doing something.)

10.55am : Written note : " Don't Forget the Birds Will sing at 1.45" (I wonder if they will?)

11.15am Iam counting down it feels like New year. This is a pivotal moment coming up. Its both the start and the finish of the 24 hour clock. 

The last 45 minutes. 

The clip of a clock strapped to the back of a bike being ridden along the river. 

I remember 23 hours and 45 minutes ago I saw the same clock floating down the river in one of the first clips I saw, symbolically and for me now, visually starting our journey in the 24 hour time clock and now finishing it with a backwards in time resolution.

11.40am I can hear the sound of actual time approaching.

Thats it we done it….

Time is passing us by, every minute of everyday, even when we sleep.

Wake up!