The Clock is a 24-hour video installation that traces through the history of world cinema and television

Time. It is unavoidable, reflective, and theoretical. It is also much, much more.

As such, Christian Marclay’s exhibition, The Clock, highlights the myriad characteristics of time and the way it affects

humans on a grand scale. Winner of the Golden Lion, the top prize awarded at the Venice Biennale, this exhibition is sure to make you look at your watch in a completely new way.

The Clock is a series of vignettes taken from films and television shows showcasing cinematic scenes where characters are shaped or altered by the concept of time. It took Marclay and his assistants over three years to produce this 24-hour-long cinematic chef d’œuvre which pulls the audience into the narrative fold with gratifying results. You are forced to ponder, theorize, deliberate and conclude. And start again.

The Clock works in a number of ways. First of all, it demonstrates the narrative quality of time. As the clips reveal, the time pinpointed in various clips marks the actual passing of time. So, for example, if it is currently 11:20 a.m. and you are watching the clips, the scenes will showcase films where the time is 11:20 a.m, and so on.

Audience members are invited to be actually part of the filmic narratives, whereby the passing of time is revealed. It’s genius, at best. As Zadie Smith from the New York Review of Books said, The Clock is “neither bad nor good, but sublime.”

The audience is subjected to a wide variety of scenes, and to a variety of emotions at that. Marclay shows how time can be theorized. We see a small boy earnestly drawing a watch on his wrist with a felt pen, then bringing his wrist to his ear and hearing ticking sounds.

On the other hand, time can also be objectified. A naked man lying in bed, surprised as his lover hands him a big watch as a thank you present. “You don’t have to bring me gifts,” the man objects. The woman responds, smiling: “But do you like it?”

Time is a memory-shaper. We see a woman standing over her dog. She has just realized that the dog had passed away. She glances at the clock on the kitchen wall, and the audience understands — she will never forget the exact hour at which her dog died.

Time also acts as an event-maker. We see a couple glancing outside and worriedly eyeing at their watches. “It should have happened by now,” mutters the man, referring to a bomb detonating.

Time can seal someone’s fate. A blonde woman sits nervously smoking in a hall, checking the big clock on the wall. A uniformed guard approaches her and declares: “You can come in now. The jury has decided.”

Alternatively, we see an even darker side to the power of time. A man is holding a gun to a woman’s head, singing: “Ain’t got no alternative, ya got 40 seconds to live.”

Time is also, sadly for some of us, unavoidable — hello, Monday mornings. The audience giggles when a man is brutally woken up by his alarm clock, emanating “Jingle Bells” music. The man promptly throws the alarm clock against the wall and repeatedly sends empty beer bottles its way, screaming: “Fuck you!”

Finally, time can accentuate our boredom. In one clip, we see actor Matt Damon walk into a room and suppress a sigh, as if once again being confronted by a state of utter monotony.

The clips are as diverse as can be, showcasing beautiful black and white shots of women with pearl necklaces, followed by clips of American men zooming off into the desert. All of the filmic genres are covered: romance, action, thriller, comedy, gangster, musicals, adventure, historical. You name it, and it’s there.

The Clock speaks to us on many issues, but it fundamentally succeeds in bringing people to a more complex and thorough appreciation of those little ticking machines we wear on our wrists. Time exists, and merits our attention. Although it is conceptual, time delivers a powerful message: it is here, and it is here to stay.

The Clock exhibit runs until April 20 at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art.

Expatria showcases the hardships of settling somewhere new, and finding an identity there

Migration is a rupture — lives are packed, unpacked, left behind and discovered. The photography exhibition, Expatria, addresses the conscious and unconscious suturing and sense-making that follows.

The exhibit explores the complex and contradictory memories, feelings and narratives of the migration of Mexican emigrants through portraits of their everyday domestic lives. The exhibition consists of 15 photographs of 11 people. Chosen from a pool of 40 photos, the images portray a diverse range of subjects.

These subjects, coming from small towns to sprawling megacities, hold a variety of professions — from nuns, to university professors, to the unemployed. However, the underlying current is that at one point or another, all the individuals in the photographs are dealing with the cultural wobbliness of migration.

“I found that the issue of language was a shared [theme]. How they felt when they arrived and how they had to learn a foreign language. Also food. People would bring food from Mexico, it was something that was very important to maintain for them,” explained Natalia Lara Díaz-Berrio, a Concordia student that immigrated to Montreal in 2010 and the artist behind the exhibition.

The photographs are on display at Espacio México, a relatively easy to miss gallery located inside the Mexican consulate. The project was a natural fit.

Nuria Carton de Grammont, curator of the exhibit, explained that the gallery is “a dialogue space for Mexican immigration in Canada, we wanted to speak to our local community.”

Díaz-Berrio added, “I knew that they were interested in this kind of project, and I knew for them that immigration is a subject that they find really really important.”

The portraits depict the intimate living spaces of Mexican migrants and looks at personal material and visual realities of migration, underlining how identity is performed and negotiated on the level of everyday household decisions and aesthetics. There are images of the austere and anonymous apartments of new migrants on the one hand, and the lavishly furnished homes of the settled on the other.

“I find that space has a lot to do with the personality of an individual. The objects, the size of the space, even the lighting. In this project it was clear that absences were significant as well. People would ask me questions [about the photographs] like ‘in this photo, there is nothing that is Mexican, no furniture or decorations that are Mexican’,” Díaz-Berrio said.

Like some voyages, Díaz-Berrio’s destination was quite different from where she originally intended to go.

“[At the beginning] I wanted to demystify stereotypes, I wanted to show, that we [Mexican migrants] are not what people think we are. That was my first idea,” Díaz-Berrio said. “Then it became more a reflection about identity and migration and personal experience. It became a more complex piece about how we build our identity as Mexicans.”

Much like Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, who considered his portraits a record of his own life not the lives of others, Expatria is in fact a reflection of the photographer and how she sees the world at the moment.

In discussing her project, Díaz-Berrio said: “I feel very Mexican, but on the other hand, my father is Bolivian, my grandfather is Spanish and his father was German. I come from a history of migration. In the photos I find there is a great amount of ambiguity. We can’t really see if someone is Mexican. I declare that I am Mexican but there is a lot of complexity. Personally, I find there is a point where we become multinational.”

The project was also a means for Díaz-Berrio to explore her own identity as well as those of others.

“I met people who were living in their host country for six months and some who lived there for 20 years. They were still uncomfortable with this notion of identity,” explained Díaz-Berrio. “There is always a fracture between where I live and where I come from. I don’t think it’s possible to resolve this fracture. I saw that it was not just me, it was a shared phenomenon among immigrants.”

The exhibition is not so much about finding answers or even coming to terms with the contradictions and confusions of migration and cultural hybridity. Instead, it examines the lived experience of migration.

As de Grammont explains “I think you don’t have to deal with them, in a sense that you don’t have to resolve the contradictions, you have to accept and live with them and it’s part of life. You can’t live a clean life free from contradictions, it’s part of the identity. In my personal case, I don’t fight with that, it’s what I am.”

Expatria: Photos of Natalia Lara Díaz-Berrio runs until May 1 at Espacio México.

Homophobic legislations have been making the rounds of the media — with the current Sochi Olympics, all eyes are on Russia with their recent anti-queer propaganda bill. To Russia with Love, by Montrealer Damián Siqueiros, speaks out against Russia’s discriminatory stance through the depiction of various Russian homosexuals in a romantic setting.

The conference, held on Feb. 13, showcased many aspects of the project including the social milieu from which it emerged and the artist’s process. Attended by fifty individuals, including those involved with the project and their friends, spirits were high. But one item was missing: the artwork itself. No art was shown save for a powerpoint presentation projected onto a wall of Gallery D.

The pieces themselves did not seem to be important. The focus, rather was on what they represented in the To Russia with Love movement.

The first part of the evening reflected this purpose through a skype call with Russian artist Alexey Timbul, who gave his account of living in Russia under the threat of violence. He highlighted how in the current political environment even something as simple as meeting same-gender individuals for a date is impossible.

Traditionally, one could meet other homosexuals through various Internet dating sites, but as of late, these encounters have become dangerous. Timbul alleges that fake accounts are being created on these sites with the sole purpose of baiting homosexuals and inflicting violence upon them. This constant threat did not seem to weigh heavily on Timbul but left the audience quite somber.

Timbul further described the main issue with all pro-LGBT social movements to date. Whether they be sit-ins featuring same sex kisses, Facebook petitions, media pressure against the Sochi Olympics, or protests — all events have one thing in common: they originate from the West. Within Russia, as homosexuality is publicized as a distinctly Western social phenomenon, the fact that movements come from the outside support this feeling of otherness to Russians. It is in this context that Damián Siqueiros’ work adds to the conversation.

The pieces in the To Russia with Love collection feature iconic historic and modern queer characters with nationalistic settings. Reminiscent of Romantic-era painters such as Karl Bryullov and Rafail Levitsky, the images have a similar warm color quality. Through a process of photo-painting, the scenes were photographed and presented without the use of photoshopping. The artist used fog machines, the placement of cement dust, lighting techniques and specialized lenses to capture the artwork.

This was detailed by the author himself, along with a Wikipedia-esque description of every character utilized during the second half of the presentation. During this period the audience drifted in and out of conversation with each other and more wine glasses appeared.

Perhaps the audience’s lack of attention was due to their intimacy with the project or the fact that all images may be found, without exception, on the project’s website.

Although an interesting conference about the overall project, it was not an art display. At the moment, the artist plans to stage the same presentation in as many venues as possible to spread the word about his project. For those who would like more information about the state of Russia and what it is like to be queer within the country the conference is a must see. However, if your interest lies in the art itself, this is a presentation best to be missed.

You can view the pictures themselves on the artists’ website at torussiawithlove.squarespace.com.

An Aboriginal man converses in Mohawk to a silent and attentive audience, he is performing a ritual of gratitude for all elements in life: people, earth, water, animals, plants, wind, sun and stars. Visitors don’t comprehend the language but they stand in silent contemplation. The ritual was held by Philip Deering, a Mohawk, at the opening of the exhibition Native Immigrant by Chilean artist Carolina Echeverria. The exhibition comprises 25 paintings, three sculptures and three participatory installations, all dealing with the experience of immigration.

In Echeverria’s opinion, everyone is an immigrant in Canada, with different arrival dates (except for the First Nations people). However, she feels “culturally closer to First Nations than to the settled people of the country,” because Native people, despite having different languages and cultures, identify as a single nation. Thus, through her work, she attempts to bridge the gap between immigrants and First Nation peoples.

Paintings are colourful, playful and symbolic. She depicts the connection of immigrants to the land through her imagery: women in nature, with trees, plants, animals, water and earth. Deering mentioned that for Aboriginal people, the myth of the creation begins in the sky; it involves a woman, birds and earth. Similarly to Echeverria’s work, Deering considers “that nature is a key element” for his Aboriginal culture.

Along with the paintings, three participatory works by Echeverria invite viewers to contribute with personal objects in the creation of the art.

“Immigrant Dress” invites the visitors to get together and sew a dress with fabrics, clothing or other symbolic objects of sentimental, multicultural values,” Echeverria explained.

For the artist, it is a way to construct culture inclusively. She wishes that the activity of creating the dress “could become a national activity, besides hockey and curling.” She dreams that all airports in Canada would have a dress to welcome immigrants.

“The Charter of Immigrant Values” is an ongoing creation of a mural where visitors can write their own “manifesto of Native immigrants.”

Echeverria explained that “it is a creative and inclusive response to the proposed Quebec charter of values. The time where the country [is] divided in French and in English is over, it is very outdated.”

The participatory installation “We are all in the same boat” is composed of a hand-knitted, eight-foot long boat and several glass containers.

“The boat navigates in the ocean of memories and I am inviting the viewers to get detached from their memories by putting personal objects in the container with St-Laurent River water,” she said.

Echeverria is influenced by the work of the Brigada Ramona Parra, a Chilean leftist art movement and by the artist Norval Morrisseau who created a visual language for native people. The exhibition has a rich vocabulary of life and rooting through different mediums. Paintings, sculptures and installations invite contemplation, imagination, healing and contribution.

All her work intends to empower immigrants. She considers art political, and that it is connected to people and permits social change. Furthermore, she wishes that artists would be fighters for ideals and for culture because culture is organic and alive.

“Imagine if that charter of values would have been written together, how amazing that would have been,” she said. “Instead of everybody fighting, we would all be excited about creating a new society or creating an identity based on common values.”

Native Immigrant runs until Nov. 3 in the Rialto Hall Theatre located at 5711 Parc Ave. Those who are interested in collaborating in “Immigrant Dress” can attend the specific sessions taking place from Wednesdays to Sundays from 12 to 6 p.m.