Made in collaboration with horologist Greg Arp, The Marches deconstructs the infinite depths within Arp Clock and Wood Shop to better understand how humans attempt to construct and control the most artificial of all our inventions: Time.
Time, Barthes wrote, is like a spiral; "things recur but on another level, nothing is first, but everything is new." Working entirely within the constraints of the clock shop, I utilize recovered and recycled detritus as source material for various photographic processes. The space and its tools for making and repairing clocks function as a labyrinth-like archive of time. The diversity of forms and fragments within the space form its taxonomy; schematics, drawings, newspaper clippings, family photos, broken clocks, wood, copper, glass, books, tools, machinery, cobwebs, flies, spiders, and dust. Repetition and difference create constellations of new works that echo the past lives embedded within the materials.
On April 7, 2023, after 18 months of collaboration, Greg died unexpectedly. Left to grapple with his absence, I photographed 4,024 objects found in the shop as a way to preserve the memory of Greg as the clock shop rapidly dissolved. The thousands of still-lifes exist in shifting relations to each other, forming a comprehensive list-form inventory.
Inside Arp Clock and Wood Shop, time accumulates like layers of dust. Like the polymathic nature of Greg's work, the images within The Marches function in a variety of ways but all work towards the same end; the refutation of obsolescence resists the authority of time.