This work from 1973, known as Clocks, may be considered interchangeably as an artist’s book, a photographic piece, or an urban intervention. All three classifications are correct, which should suggest immediately that the interest of the piece lies less in its final, finished form – whether as a book, photograph, or intervention – and more in what it is capable of inspiring. This determination to divert attention from the work as a completed object toward the act of creation and perception itself was widespread in the art of the 1960s, particularly in its more radical expressions, which were dominated by a poetics of happenings, in which Valcárcel participated. From this perspective, Clocks can be defined as a temporary urban intervention captured through a collection of photographs compiled in an album. More specifically, it is a box book measuring 9.7 x 9.7 x 6 cm, containing 365 loose black-and-white photographs of various calendar clocks in Madrid, taken daily over the course of a year. As with most photo albums, there is no explanatory text, just a series of snapshots in an identical format, yet appearing to be heterogeneous and casual, each dedicated to one of these street clocks. The amateur feel of the photo album is heightened by the author’s evident disinterest in the technical qualities of the images, whose only apparent function is to show – regardless of framing, light, or scene – the precise moment and location of the photograph, which necessarily coincide with the data on those chronometric tables placed on the sidewalk and raised above traffic. Rectangular in format and mounted at the top of a post, these panels indicated the name of the public road (for example, plaza de Cibeles) at the top and were divided into two symmetrical vertical fields: the left side displayed the actual calendar clock, while the right featured advertisements.

These clocks served as landmarks in public spaces, punctuating the road and marking time for pedestrians. Traditionally, this function, serving as a spatial and temporal marker, was associated with monuments. The difference here is that the purpose was not to commemorate any memorable event but merely to remind passersby of the time, helping them synchronize with the city’s instantaneous time, the present of moments in series ticked off by the clock. Nor was the intention to highlight a specific place, but simply to indicate the pedestrian’s location on the street map, given that the ubiquitous and isomorphic nature of metropolitan spaces no longer lend themselves to noticing any particular location, but simply to pointing out directions. These vertical panels stood in public spaces as anti-monuments, as signs of the new spatiotemporal experience of the city, dominated by traffic and movement. In the modern city, governed by the flow of people, goods, energy, and information, the artist need only surrender to the flow and pay attention to the signals that modulate movement. If walking purposefully is enough to reveal the basic order of time and public space, then it is equally sufficient to take photographs attentively to demonstrate that the most fundamental quality of photography lies not so much in the finished product as in the operation of taking the picture, in the photographic act itself. The singular nature of the photos in Clocks lies in the fact that their subject is not so much public space as public time, and that to depict it, they rely not only on their representational value but also on the inherent power of photography as an act. By juxtaposing the transience inherent in photography with the time of the city, the underlying dynamic between the photographic device and the city as a spatiotemporal device is also revealed. Owing to this dynamic, photography – as a machine for recording instantaneous images in series – is ideally suited to capturing the temporal and spatial experience of the pedestrian: both the serial moments of the city-clock and the isomorphic and ubiquitous spatiality of cities built on uniform lots.

This is one of the first works from the period of public art that emerged after the artist’s participation in the 1972 Encuentros de Pamplona. Like Accounting for the Time, also in this collection, it reveals the centrality of time in his work. Clocks was first presented at the galería Seiquer in Madrid in 1974 and has been exhibited on numerous occasions. Notably, it was featured in Variaciones en España: Fotografía y arte 1900- 1980, where its curator, Horacio Fernández, highlighted its importance in the history of contemporary photography in Spain. See also Juan Albarrán’s Del fotoconceptualismo al fototableau. Fotografía, performance y escenificación en España (1970-2000) [From Photoconceptualism to Phototableaux: Photography, Performance, and Staging in Spain (1970- 2000)]. 

José María Díaz Cuyas