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The Watch starts with a question posed 200 years ago: If you were walking across a barren landscape and found a pocketwatch on the ground, how did it come to be there, and in this context, is it any different than an animal or plant?
This installation is a 10’ diameter version of that watch, embedded in the desert surface. As biologists look inside animals to trace evolutionary ancestries, answers lie within The Watch. The interior clockwork is exposed, with additional gears scattered nearby. Built as a zoetrope, each spinning cog tells a story about how life came to be. Some cogs run the ticking clockwork, stories that interlock to form our best understanding of the evolutionary clock’s mechanisms. Other cogs are scattered nearby, telling origin stories discarded in favor of those that better fit with the scientific observations and discoveries of the past two centuries.
Read More: Philosophical Statement | Description
Recent Photos of The Watch
About Me
Artist: Chassy Cleland. This will be my 8th year on the playa and my second big art installation. Last year, Henya Emmer and I created The Cave, a large installation out in deep playa. Aside from making my usual contribution to playa surreality, mayhem, volunteering & LNT efforts, I organized the United States Potsal Service theme camp from 2003-2005, worked as crew on the Quixotic Windmills by Eric Miller in 2005 and the Shadow Chamber, a theme camp in 2006.
