Marclay's most important films and projections to date.
Christian Marclay is an eminent conceptual artist, fascinated with all
aspects of popular music and cinema. He is a collector of audio
recordings and films and his electic practice spans from collage to
performance and "turntablism." His obsession for collecting and
re-assembling contemporary artifacts is infectious. If Marclay's craft of
re-construction is itself musical (the pauses and absences being as
much part of the work as the shots and beats), his re-compositions also
follow a rich heritage of montage within cinema and experimental film.
The book reunites some of his most important films and projections to
date and has been designed by NORM in close collaboration with the
artist. Five important essays and an interview by
Michael Snow bring new
light to Marclay's work as a performer, musician, visual artist, and
filmmaker.
With sampling, shuffling, and montage taking center stage, the practice of Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay (born 1955 in San Rafael, California, lives and works in New York), known as the inventor of "
turntablism," has been anchored in the universe of sound since the end of the 1970s. An eminent conceptual artist and recipient of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his landmark 24-hour video installation
The Clock (2010), he is equally fascinated by all aspects of popular music and avant-garde music, Hollywood cinema, and experimental film. Drawing on the
Fluxus vision of art and Pop spirit, and heir to
John Cage and
Andy Warhol, Marclay has been exploring all the possibilities of the visual arts and the relationships between visual and
sonic phenomena through collage, assemblage, installation, video, photography, painting, and printmaking. Also a performer, he has taken part in numerous musical projects, making the vinyl record and the turntable his favorite instruments.
