A Day Without a Clock

June 6, 2024
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY

Co-Authored with Amanda Leigh Evans (as part of DeepTime Collective)
Collaborative, interdisciplinary public artwork & performance

View full event schedule HERE.

Produced during year-long artist residency by invitation (support from Garth Johnson and Adam Carlin). A Day Without a Clock was generously funded by the 2023 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Performing Artist Projects Grant and the Everson Museum of Art.

What is Time Without a Clock?

The clock is a tool for standardizing and measuring time. A Day Without A Clock was not a day without any clocks, but rather a day without the mechanical clock that we collectively agree upon and allow to guide our daily lives.

DeepTime Collective (Amanda Leigh Evans and I) produced a day-long immersive artwork experience, A Day Without A Clock, which eliminated the mechanical clock as a familiar tool. Throughout the day, we hosted a series of sequential, time-based public events developed in collaboration with community partners. To facilitate these events, we created alternative timekeeping devices for museum staff, visitors, and collaborators to remain grounded despite the absence of the clock. Around the museum, visitors and staff discovered tools crafted by the artists to maintain the museum’s regular functions despite the disruption caused by the absence of a clock. Additionally, we staged an intensive 10-hour performance to ensure the alternative clocks kept running with some semblance of accuracy.

During this process, DeepTime Collective revealed that to create an institutional experience without a clock, we, ourselves had to embody the role of the clock. Precision was crucial, yet impossible to maintain through the softness the body. While some of our self created tools were accurate, others were not. These tools were crafted and maintained by hand, which inherently has its limitations. Consequently, no one, including us, knew the exact time at any point during A Day Without A Clock.

Participants needing to know the time during A Day Without A Clock were encouraged to consult multiple timekeeping devices to approximate the hour and minute of the day. The more devices they encountered, the more accurately they could determine the time. These devices shed light on how the mechanical clock dictates our personal and collective experiences.

Learn more about the alternative timekeeping devices and the events as artworks that we created here.

Also a solo exhibition of the same title was on view at the Everson’s Beadel Gallery from June 7–August 2024. It featured ceramic alternative timekeeping devices, ephemera from the performances that visualize the shape of time, and artwork generated during a day of participatory events coauthored with diverse community partners.