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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2022

Simon Goldhill
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

In my view, there is no artwork that captures the modern sense of time as profoundly as Christian Marklay’s installation, The Clock – first produced in 2010, and, since its opening, repeatedly staged in galleries around the world, to amazed reviews. It is, as Zadie Smith declared, ‘sublime’. The Clock is made up of around 12,000 short film and television clips that run on a 24-hour loop. In every single clip, you can see a watch or clock which shows the exact time at which you are watching The Clock. The synchronization is both funny and uncanny. If you start watching at 2.10, each of the short extracts contains a timepiece showing 2.10 – often several clips for the same minute. At 2.11, it is all 2.11 – and so on for twenty-four hours. At 6.00, a string of hatted men suggests a cocktail; tea is taken repeatedly between 4.00 and 4.30, tea-time; high noon looms and awaits its gunshots. The joy or frustration of interruption is replayed again and again with an extraordinary fascination.

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The Christian Invention of Time
Temporality and the Literature of Late Antiquity
, pp. 1 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Introduction
  • Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Christian Invention of Time
  • Online publication: 13 January 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071260.001
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  • Introduction
  • Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Christian Invention of Time
  • Online publication: 13 January 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071260.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Simon Goldhill, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Christian Invention of Time
  • Online publication: 13 January 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071260.001
Available formats
×