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It's remarkable that the work was made for a bank, an institution that one might well view as the embodiment of this concept of time. The clocks that Raqs has installed in the reception area of the new Deutsche Bank building in Birmingham are the kind we're familiar with from hotel lobbies or airports. Lined up in a row, they announce the time in London, Peking, Tokyo, and New York. Here, however, the clocks do not function as mere measuring instruments of time; the numerals on their faces are replaced by words describing an array of emotional states, such as "Anxiety," "Duty," and "Ecstasy." Objective units of measurement-the hours and minutes that have our lives and the world in their firm grip-collide with emotions and subjective sentiments that do not lend themselves to exact measure or calculation. The clock hands also rotate over emotions that have to be suppressed in everyday working life: "Fatigue," for instance, or "Fear." Raqs allows for each of these feelings, distributes them like sober entities across the clocks' faces without ascribing any value to them-although "Epiphany" arrives at the twelfth hour.
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