FADO is pleased to announce Clock by Jennifer Nelson and Glen Redpath, the latest event in its 12-month durational performance series, TIME TIME TIME.
Visit seats of government around the world and you will find towering clocks. Situated at the centre of public life, they mark the passing hours and give order to the day, fulfilling that most basic of human impulses – to know the time. In an unusual US-Canada collaboration, two performance artists will offer Toronto’s city hall a different kind of monumental timepiece – a ‘human clock’.
At sunrise, Jennifer Nelson will begin moving almost imperceptibly around the reflecting pool at Nathan Phillips Square, completing a single circle as the sun sets almost 12-hours later. Meanwhile, Glen Redpath will follow the same path at a run, covering the distance of several marathons over the course of the same 12-hour day. Testing human limits of speed and endurance, these two artists will act like the hands of a clock, using their bodies to mark the time. Nelson writes, “Time … appears in the space between seconds, when the strain of prolonged physical and mental concentration alters perceptions of what is slow or what is long.”
Nelson and Redpath began working together four years ago when both were at the San Francisco Art Institute. They continue to collaborate despite the geographical separation – distance fueling their interest in the possibility of a universal body. Both artists use duration in their performances as a way of allowing time to contribute its influence on their bodies.
Presented with travel support from the Manitoba Arts Council / Conseil des art du Manitoba.
