Big Crunch Clock, Swiss Pavillion Venice Biannual, 2005

«Big Crunch Clock is a digital clock that counts backwards the five billion years that we have left before the sun explodes. The clock that I installed at the entrance to the Swiss pavilion is the large external format of a previous, much smaller version that I put to work at the end of '99. It has 20 numbers: from the billions of years to the tenths of a second, and it is designed to be able to function with solar energy - the same energy that will one day destroy it. The buyer will have to adapt it to future technology. A small gift for future generations... » ~ Gianni Motti.

At 10 o’clock, on the day the fifty-first edition of the Venice Biennale opens its doors to the public, the end of the world will be only 4,999,999,993 years, 202 days, 14 hours and a couple of seconds away. This is what the Big Crunch Clock tells us, a digital clock with a length of 500 cm, created by Gianni Motti for the Biennale Pavilion, which, with almost exaggerated precision, counts down towards the moment when, astrophysicists believe, the sun will explode. At precisely that instant, as opposed to the Big Bang which gave origin to the universe, all traces of Gianni Motti - the artist whose works consist not so much in creating objects but in the creation of stories and legends that become part of the real world through the most diverse channels - will disappear.

At the exact moment when the sun explodes, however, Gianni Motti will have succeeded in appropriating, thanks to his 20-digit timer, the culminating moment of the history of the solar system, transforming it into a work of art.

source: nicolavonsenger.com