Marclay's « The Clock », 2010

 

The agents of time and the time of the agents: the action of timepieces in Christian Marclay’s The Clock

Lorenz Engell

Pages 578-592 | Published online: 27 May 2016

ABSTRACT

In the first part, the paper introduces and unfolds the concept of the ‘agent’ as contrasting the concept of the ‘actor’. The figure of the secret agent, for example, in TV series and feature films, serves as a starting point for the analysis of the concept. Agents, efficient only if they work independently and under command at the same time, having agency only within networks of both persons and artefacts, cross the border between the active and the passive. Even objects can be addressed as agents, an example of which is the clock. As an agent of timemaking, the clock has an intricate relation to intentionality; it hence deals with the problem of how and under which conditions it is possible to qualify certain operations, such as the functioning of a clock, as actions without actor. In the second part, the concept of the clock as agent of time and the time it produces is re-examined against the backdrop of Christian Marclay’s video installation The Clock. It shows that, according to Marclay’s work, the intersection of two operations of timing, namely the punctuating rhythmic measurement on the one hand, and the opening of undefined duration, creates moments of continuous presence in which an operation can change its course, take another direction or be affected by another. The overlapping of time measurement and duration thus opens up the necessary possibility for intentionality to inscribe itself into the chain of operations which then can be ascribed the quality of action, however, infiltrated with passivity at the same time.

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