Bezos’ 10,000 Year Clock
In a glitzy Vogue photoshoot with Jeff Bezos, fiancée Lauren Sanchez offered rare access inside the billionaire’s secretive installation known as the 10,000 Year Clock – an eccentric contraption buried under a remote Texas mountain.
The striking images capture Sanchez sprawled theatrically across the clock’s central staircase in glittering haute couture.
But behind the dramatics lies a philosophical message around fostering long-range thinking.
A mix of imagination and hubris
Begun in 2011, the romantic timepiece ticks just once annually, with cuckoo chimes only sounding each millennium.
This glacial tempo inspires contemplation of how present-day choices resonate over centuries.
Its isolated mountain setting hints at Bezos’ own Mr. Burns-esque ambitions while evoking humanity’s simultaneous fragility and ingenuity across epochs. Sanchez dubbed it “the future” – part idealistic art project, part bomb shelter.
It does spark conversation
Whatever one makes of the extravagant ode to deep time captures Bezos’ paradoxical blend of imagination and impatience, vulnerability and hubris.
Sanchez’s shoot gleefully bridged past eras and coming ages with today’s ephemeral, dizzyingly accelerated culture.
Perhaps the 10,000-Year Clock’s greatest achievement is fueling the conversation about society’s dangerous short-termism, even if it takes a tabloid-friendly billionaire and celebrity partner to command that attention.
Enigmatic desert project built to shift society’s short-termism
