UR COLLAGE CLOCKS

TIME CUT UP

Bjørnsletta is an elementary school and junior high school in Oslo. When the old buliding was torn down and a brand new one erected in 2014, Kulturetaten, Oslo Kommune, commissioned artwork for four different locations by six artists.

I made three collage clocks, one for each of the three, main stairwells of the school. Each clock has a diameter of 120 cm.

In all the clocks the hands are replaced with rotating discs. The circular discs are cut into the clock face, across images. The discs rotate; fragmenting and assembling the image as time goes by. Consequently the composition is always changing, in a continuous loop, each state representing the current time.

The discs on the first clock rotate once every minute, as the seconds hand would, during which one image is fragmented and collected by 10 discs. It is placed in the hallway of the youngest children, establishing the logic of the collage clocks.

The discs on the second clock rotate once every hour, where four colored shapes are cut up, coming together successively every 15 minutes. As such, it will only tell you the time within the hour., as the minutes hand would

The discs on the third clock rotate once every 12 hours, as the hour hand would, each number being fragmented by one disc, becoming whole successively every hour. By comparing the positions of two fragmented numbers, it is possible to tell time with about five minutes accuracy.

Carsten Aniksdal and I made this short film about the three collage clocks.