Real Time: Sweepers Clock

Laced with dry wit and humor, the Sweepers Clock is arguably the most labor-intensive of Dutch designer Maarten Baas’s 2009 series of timepieces. As the name suggests, the clock features two people with brooms pushing lines of debris in real time to form minute and hour hands. This work draws our attention to how the perception of time is dictated by regularly occurring activities, as well as to the fruitlessness of hard labor.