northcabin – Broken Watch

northcabin is a temporary commissioning programme taking place in a disused operating cabin on Redcliffe Bridge, Bristol. northcabin commissions emerging artists to produce unique and ambitious artworks for the public realm. 

Jo Ray, Broken Watch, 24th May – 14th June 2009 (performance)
For northcabin, Jo Ray created Broken Watch, a piece which drew on the cabin’s panoptical architecture as well at its identity as an utilitarian structure, which in its disused state offered an architectural pause, a space in which to wonder. 

Broken Watch consisted of a piece of apparatus which was activated daily by a participant for a fixed duration, acknowledging the economy of time. The piece highlighted our relationship to surveillance and spectacle through this absurdist construct, which set up an unsteady power relationship that continually alternated from one side of the glass to the other.