Maarten Baas creates clock made of people for Schiphol Airport

Dutch designer Maarten Baas enlisted 1,000 volunteers to form the hands of The People's Clock, which provides a choreographed representation of the passage of time at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.

Ten years after creating a smaller clock with hands drawn on in real time for the Dutch airport's Lounge 2, Baas was invited back to install The People's Clock as a focal point in Lounge 1, which serves intra-European travellers.

Both clocks involve a real-time 12-hour performance, but whereas the original piece depicted Baas on his own drawing and redrawing the clock's hands with a roller and paint, the latest installation aims to demonstrate the power of cooperation.

Baas recruited 1,000 participants to move in sync, forming the clock's hour and minute hands. The second hand comprises a single person running a lap of the circular perimeter each minute.

The production was filmed inside a hangar at Schiphol airport and the majority of the volunteers are airport employees, including security staff, baggage handlers, airline personnel and cleaners.

"Thousands of people are involved in the clock," Baas pointed out in a film documenting the process. "It's a huge production and really the effort of so many people who did this behind the scenes."

"I don't know any other example in which so many people for such a long time were concentrated on one place to make one artwork," he added. "So many people who are becoming, literally, time."

A camera positioned overhead filmed the participants' movements over the course of 12 hours. To keep people engaged throughout the day, the airport and its partners organised activities including yoga, silk-printing, games and workshops, as well as providing meals.

The final cut is displayed across four screens arranged around a cube measuring 250 x 250 x 250 centimetres, creating a playful representation of time that will be visible to tens of millions of travellers who transit through Schiphol each year.

The Schiphol clocks are part of Baas' Real Time series, which dates back to 2009. The artworks seek to highlight the strangeness of measured time and draw attention to the phenomenon of time passing.

The first works in the series were presented during Milan Design Week and included a clock made by two men sweeping debris to form the hands, and a digital-style clock in which a performer paints over panels on a glass screen.

Each artwork is a play on the term "real time", which is used in the film industry to describe a scene depicting events as they actually occur in order to add a greater sense of realism and connection with the characters.

In the original Schiphol clock, Baas wore blue overalls to reference the uniforms of the airport's cleaning staff. The People's Clock is also intended to represent the many employees who help keep Schiphol running on a daily basis.

His previous projects include a series of sculptures resembling distorted musical instruments and a Milan design week installation for fashion brand G-Star RAW comprising a denim-wrapped private plane and jean-shaped cabinets.

The photography is by Thijs Wolzak.

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