Florentine watchmaker Officine Panerai recently announced its partnership with Manifesta 11, the 2016 European Bienniale of Contemporary Art in Zurich which opened June 9 and is on view through September 18.
Embracing the biennial‘s “What People Do for Money – Some Joint Ventures,” Panerai collaborated with American artist Jon Kessler for the exhibition. Panerai developed for the occasion a special version of its P.2005/T movement. A skeletal structure, the P.2005/T movement is one of the watchmaker’s most complex timepieces with hand-wound movement.
Kessler built upon its central structure for the resulting mechanical creation The World is Cuckoo (Clock). The artwork is intended as a narrative of a cuckoo’s inability to fly. It correlates the presence of time with vulnerability from loss. Kessler used items to exemplify the interrelatedness of time with early cinema, musical boxes, surveillance videos and drone technologies.