Kosuths piece clock (one and five) was released in 1965. It was a part of a collection Kusuth was working on called “ proto – investigations” in the collection was a number of or pieces were he combined every day objects and furniture along side photography and descriptions translated from English to other European languages.

Each of these clocks feature a real object; a real clock, a photograph of the real clock and three printed definitions of clocks and words associated with with clocks. At the time of this piece he was very interested in anthropology linguistics which is how language in social surroundings changes behaviour.

What does it mean?

Kosuth explores the use of text and words in place of imagery and the focused on the relationship which worlds and images have together creating different ideas. He wanted to focus on the meaning if things through language and not through visual images. He wanted to focus on three things; how we experience language, how we comprehend language and how we respond to language.

He became fascinated with the combination of visual images and linguistics and theta there should be not obsticals in conveying ideas like images.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kosuth-clock-one-and-five-english-latin-version-t01909