On Sampled Time and Intermedial Space: Postproduction, Video Installation and Christian Marclay’s The Clock

Like other postproduction work by contemporary artists and purveyors of popular culture, the videos of artist, musician and composer Christian Marclay use accumulations of cultural data extracted from thousands of films (and television shows) as raw material for the diegesis. What sets Marclay’s installation The Clock (2010) apart from other installations and films in this category is the interrelationship established between its postproduction aesthetic and its specific display conditions. By matching on-screen time with actual time in a carefully designed exhibition context, The Clock simultaneously reifies the psychosomatic transformation of the moviegoer identified by Roland Barthes and dismantles the hermetic nature of the cinematic apparatus. In so doing, Marclay mobilizes latent aspects of video installation to produce new phenomenological experiences and reorganize the relationship between aesthetics and everyday life.