Cuckoo clocks are emblematic of Swiss watchmaking savoir faire. So it is fitting that the second edition of Dubai Watch Week, itself a celebration of Swiss horological excellence, will feature an exhibition dedicated entirely to cuckoo clocks. On show at The Dubai Mall's Fashion Catwalk between November 15 and 29, the exhibition, 24 Hours in the Life of a Swiss Cuckoo Clock, is curated by Alexandra Midal and presents 24 modern iterations of this timeless classic, crafted by students and staff of the prestigious HEAD-Genève art school. The 2016 edition of the annual Dubai Watch Week will take place from November 15 to 19 at venues across DIFC and The Dubai Mall. Other highlights of the event are the Horological Movements exhibition, which will explore various classifications of watch movements; the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève winning watches exhibition, which will showcase some of the most innovative timepieces from the last year; watchmaking classes; and the Horology Forum.
Observing Time
This creation by Nicolas Lafargue and Michaela Ciubotaru presents its cuckoo in a “clock tree”, and is an artful exploration of the subtle balance between mechanism and object. The cantilevered clock pieces come together to activate a chime that awakens the tiny bird perched up high.
Coucou Bijou
Coucou Bijou combines technology and tradition to represent the Swiss practice of transhumance, the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between summer and winter pastures. As the hours pass, the clock face moves down the chain – returning to the top by morning time.
Voyages Extraordinaires
Designed by Claudio Colucci, this clock pays tribute to Jules Verne's Extraordinary Voyages and consists of concentric superimposed disks. Each disc offers specific information relating to hours, minutes, seconds, astrological signs, holidays, seasons or moons, creating a visually intricate allegory of life.
Cuckoo
With its standard-looking circular clock face, this looks like a most unassuming piece of horology at first glance. But when the hour strikes, the cuckoo rotates by 360 degrees, momentarily appearing in the gap in the outer tube. Be advised, there’s no warning or cuckoo call, so you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled.
Peeping Clock
This reimagining of the cuckoo clock combines carved wood with a smartphone-charging cradle. Peeping Clock retransmits a live view of a Swiss chalet, capturing the neo-pastoral motifs that are central to traditional cuckoo clocks. The actual cuckoo appears ever hour in the form of a giant bird that lands on the chalet’s roof.
Follow the Birds
This is a clock for the digital age. A sensor that is both a photo booth and a seed distributor is lodged in a pine tree in a forest in the Pays-d’Enhaut region of Switzerland. When a bird lands on it, its portrait is both printed and published online. This cuckoo clock takes the form of a wooden nest box from which portraits of the forest birds emerge.
Paper Clock
With Paper Clock, you are invited to tear off one sheet of paper from the block every day, to reveal an episode in a story related by the cuckoo. Day after day, the torn-off pages are arranged in a “book box” provided for this purpose. At the end of the year, you can reread the story in one go, while another block begins a whole new narrative.
Read this and more stories in Luxury magazine, out with The National on Thursday, November 3.
sdenman@thenational.ae
