Christian Marclay's video installation "The Clock" is a refreshing 24-hour cinematic surprise

A giant clock face plastered above the entrance of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art both taunts you and invites you inside – a disturbing reminder that Big Brother or some greater power is watching.

 

You zigzag up the endless corridor of the main wing with caution as if it were the hallway of the Overlook Hotel and a pair of twins in white lace dresses await you around the bend.

 

Perhaps you stall a minute at the velvet curtains, gathering your thoughts before stepping into the unknown. You glance at your watch, uncomfortably wary of the time, turn your phone to silent, then walk inside...

 

Reads the retro clock on the screen of the makeshift theater, as out-of-date as the floral wallpaper in Juno's kitchen. What could be daunting about blue shit...I mean gunk, and bacon bits? You breathe a sigh of relief, then look around hyperaware of not just the minute hand, but the other museumgoers sharing the next however many minutes inside the couch-laden exhibition with you.

Distracted by your surroundings, and craving over-salted popcorn and a blue slushy, you barely notice the seamless transition to a black-and-white classic film from the 40s on-screen. While colors fade and characters change, the music carries over to the next clip just long enough to create the feeling of never quite leaving the pregnant teenager's middle-of-nowhere American town.

 

Suddenly in a new movie entirely – of which you can't quite recall the name – the man in the grey flannel suit grabs his coat and fedora and clocks out. As one door closes...

 

...another opens. A small Manhattan apartment. 169 East 71st Street. Tenant: Holly Golightly.

 

You quietly slip your hand into your worn denim pocket, searching for your smart phone to "check the time" and inevitably fall down a 6-7 minute social media rabbit hole, when Audrey Hepburn reminds you that it's

 

 

and you're hours away from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

 

A disorienting montage of transportation scenes zip by one after the next. Now, it's not only clocks and music tying the scenes together in a panoramic package, but also rain: first drizzling in one film, then ceasing in another, only to downpour mere seconds later outside a completely different train station. Every minute detail has been carefully worked out by Christian Marclay over three long years so that thousands of independent film clips with multiple narratives dissolve into one comprehensive story.

 

The ritual continues.

 

Fragmented narratives flash before your eyes, and just as you start to empathize with a very impulsive Susan Sarandon in Anywhere but Here, you're suddenly expected to rout on Hansel and Derek Zoolander in their efforts to extract their files from the computer.

 

 

Trapped inside the eternal clock like those gosh darn files.  

 

Courtesy of Christian Marclay

They say time flies, but in Marclay's case, it floats. The American artist has managed to launch time into limbo for 24 uninterrupted hours of pure cinematic joy, which will have its final 24-hour screening at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on June 28, as a part of the famed White Night. While the clear protagonist of his clever video installation is Time in its many forms – from a grandfather clock at the train station to a reliable wristwatch disguised as a family relic to a simple verbal reminder – Marclay manages to create a world where time hovers between our conscious and subconscious minds.

 

"I don't know what time is, but I know that we never have enough time," Marclay explains. "It's a stressful thing. We're much happier when we don't have to think about time."

 

In The Clock, even when your mind wanders off for a tick or a tock, Marclay always brings you back to the present. By matching thousands of clips from his 24-hour film montage with the actual time outside the cinematic world of the most iconic film stars, time is constantly at the forefront. Sometimes it zips by, other times it feels endless, and sometimes it runs a very natural course, but no matter how it subjectively makes you feel, it's there. This piece is a beautiful meditation on the constructs of time.

 

Drop all responsibilities. Leave it all behind and let The Clock take over. Stay an hour. Maybe two. Stay all day. Count the ticks. Ignore the tocks. Feel every second. Feel timeless. Feel dated. Feel infinite. Improved. After all, time heals all wounds.