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When I received the invitation to write about Christian Marclay’s The Clock, I was happy to be offered the 8:00 a.m. hour. I generally consider myself to be a morning person, not because I wake up particularly early, but because I like the morning atmosphere, the sense of possibility that accompanies a new day. To be honest, I never leave my house by 8:00 a.m. (the 7:00 a.m. hour would have been a nonstarter), but 8:00 a.m. was plausible enough to feel energizing and a bit daring. I arrived at MoMA with a feeling of pleasurable anticipation. It felt a bit scandalous to be entering the darkened auditorium before open hours, alongside only a select invited few. I chose a couch and settled in.
What I experienced was riveting. I had seen The Clock when it was shown at Paula Cooper in 2011, but I hadn’t had much time on that occasion. For this viewing, I allowed myself a full two hours, 10:00 a.m. being the absolute latest I could stay because of a 10:30 meeting. Two hours with nothing to do but watch a film felt positively luxurious.
Not surprisingly, 8:00 a.m. begins with people waking up, in some cases too late, more often too early, and occasionally right on time. Alarm clocks and watches, hourglasses and timers; people stumbling out of their own and other people’s beds; breakfasts being made and consumed; people preparing and drinking coffee; kids hurrying off to school; even some unlucky few reporting to the office. A dominant theme throughout the hour is arrivals and departures, anticipation of cars and trains. In general, uplifting music supports a sense of forward momentum. “Up, up, up,” someone urges. A man wakes his mother: she’s late apparently, but he’s up early.
One unexpected pleasure of watching The Clock is the fact that there is no need to check your watch or phone because the time is right there on the screen in front of you. In my case, I didn’t have to worry about missing my 10:30 meeting because I could count on knowing exactly what minute I would have to get up and leave. The result was a kind of unaccustomed and unadulterated absorption. It felt liberating.
But absorption in what? What exactly is it that makes The Clock so endlessly fascinating and keeps us riveted to the screen? When I arrived at 8:00 a.m., I felt like I had all the time in the world. But surprisingly quickly 8:00 a.m. became 8:27 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 9:30 a.m., until, before I knew it, it was time to leave.
As the film moved into the 9:00 a.m. and the 10:00 a.m. hour, I realized that not much had changed. People were still waking up and getting ready; still finding themselves both early and late; still waiting for cars and trains. Certainly, this would not be the case any longer at 12:00 p.m. or 2:00 p.m., I mused. On the other hand, breakfast would undoubtedly be replaced by lunch, trips to the office replaced by trips home. The expectant mood I associated with the morning hour was built into the film’s very structure. Indeed, what held me there was nothing more nor less than the drama of time itself. The endless march forward that gave the lie to my early morning anticipation. Whereas it felt exciting to watch Marclay’s stream of endless beginnings at 8:00 a.m., would it feel unsettling to observe this same parade of unfulfilled narratives at 10:00 p.m.? Because ultimately, the excitement of anticipation is predicated on a desire for closure, for some kind of resolution or state of permanent fulfillment. And yet, the only thing that brings that kind of resolution is a cessation of time—that is, death. And only our own death, not death in general, because for others, as Marclay’s film demonstrates, life moves on, which is both wonderful and terrifying. What greater drama is there than that?
At precisely 10:00 a.m., I got up to leave. A couple of new people had trickled in while I had been sitting there and a few had left. One man who had been there when I arrived remained. What hour had he been given, I wondered? How did he happen to have so much time on his hands? Frustrated that my two-hour reprieve was over, I was nonetheless beginning to feel the pressure of the day. It was no longer 8:00 a.m. and I was feeling anxious. I needed to start getting stuff done.
Claire Gilman recently joined the Morgan Library and Museum as Acquavella Curator and Department Head of Modern and Contemporary Drawings. Before that, she was Chief Curator at the Drawing Center in New York where she organized more than fifty exhibitions of artists such as Huguette Caland, Rashid Johnson, and Cecily Brown. She co-curated The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists (2019). Her exhibition, Lisa Yuskavage: Drawings, will open at the Morgan in June 2026. Her book Drawing in the Present Tense, co-authored with Roger Malbert, was recently published by Thames and Hudson.