Christian Marclay

Still image from the installation of “The Clock“, Single Channel Video, (24-hour loop), 2010
[video here]Christian Marclay The Clock

Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet – Excerpt 1

Note on the artist:

Christian Ernest Marclay (b. 11 January 1955, San Rafael, California, USA) is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.
Marclay’s work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramophone records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collages, Marclay is, in the words of critic Thom Jurek, perhaps the “unwitting inventor of turntablism.” His own use of turntables and records, beginning in the late 1970s, was developed independently of but roughly parallel to hip hop’s use of the instrument.

Marclay sometimes manipulates or damages records to produce continuous loops and skips, and has said he generally prefers inexpensive used records purchased at thrift shops, as opposed to other turntablists who often seek out specific recordings. In 1998 he claimed never to have paid more than US$1 for a record. Marclay has occasionally cut and re-joined different LP records; when played on a turntable, these re-assembled records will combine snippets of different music in quick succession along with clicks or pops from the seams — typical of noise music — and when the original LPs were made of differently-colored vinyl, the reassembled LPs can themselves be objets d’art.

Some of Marclay’s musical pieces are carefully recorded and edited plunderphonics-style; he is also active in free improvisation. He was filmed performing a duo with Erikm for the documentary Scratch. His scene didn’t make the final cut, but is included among the DVD extras.

Thom Jurek writes that “While many intellectuals have made wild pronouncements about Marclay and his art — and it is art, make no mistake — writing all sorts of blather about how he strips the adult century bare by his cutting up of vinyl records and pasting them together with parts from other vinyl records, they never seem to mention that these sound collages of his are charming, very human, and quite often intentionally hilarious.”

Marclay has performed and recorded both solo and in collaboration with many musicians, including John Zorn, William Hooker, Elliott Sharp, Otomo Yoshihide, Butch Morris, Shelley Hirsch, Flo Kaufmann and Crevice; he has also performed with the group Sonic Youth, and in other projects with Sonic Youth’s members.

At the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marclay was recognized as the best artist in the official exhibition, winning the Golden Lion for The Clock, a 24-hour compilation of time-related scenes from movies that debuted at London’s White Cube gallery in 2010. Newsweek responded by naming Marclay one of the the ten most important artists of today. Accepting the Golden Lion, Marclay invoked Andy Warhol, thanking the jury “for giving The Clock its fifteen minutes”