'It's impossible!' – Christian Marclay and the 24-hour clock made of movie clips

27 September the Uni organized trip to London to see two great media exhibitions – 24H CLock in Tate Modern Gallery and Bill Viola in the cathedral. 

"The Clock" is a such a simple idea but expanded to incredibly big size of media art.

In brief its a gigantic collage of different kind of films - old and new, black-and-white action and romantic etc.

In 24 hours Marclay is showing thousands of glimpses of clocks, watches, scenes where people are talking about time, letters etc where the time shown in the movie is actually the time in real world. So, if you watching it when its 4:15pm in the movie you will see the exactly same time.

“It is a thrilling journey through cinematic history as well as a functioning timepiece.”

The aim of this project was to experience a vast range of narratives, settings and moods within the space of a few minutes." – Christian Marclay

In the lecture we were debating what was the actual purpose of this project and why is it so effective. We get to conclusion that what the art piece really does, is making the audience do the action. It makes the audience check their time, so it does something what other movies don't.

My thoughts:

In one of my favorite Ted talks which I've watched in the past - the Designer Jinsop Lee (a TED Talent Search winner) is sharing his theory of 5-sense design which explains why smoking, clubbing, sex, fast drive etc is soo good. In his theory, than more sense people can use in the same time, than more joy they will receive which will make them want it even more.

The theory of the five senses is not only a useful tool for assessing different experiences. It allows you to apply the best experience in projects.

It's extremely good theory and I think it's very relevant to what Marclay did in his project.

Number 2 : Bill Viola

The second exhibition we were watching was in St. Paul’s Cathedral London.

Bill Viola - Martyrs

Created by Bill Viola and Kira Perov and opened in May 2014, Martyrs shows four individuals, across four colour vertical plasma screens, being martyred by the four classical elements. The work has no sound. It lasts for seven minutes.

Martyrs was joined in 2016 by a second piece entitled Mary. 

Renaissance Man:

In my opinion this media furnace was to present Mary as the mother of all people on earth now and in the past. It shows images of nature and different kinds of women holding a child in the same pose as in religious paintings. What I personally read as a message from this video is not so far from what the author wanted to convey, so I think it is done really clearly.

You can read more about it here: http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/09/renaissance-man-bill-viola-unveils-final-work-for-st-pauls-cathedral/