Christian Marclay - Biography
DJ culture is so ingrained in modern music it seems unfathomable there was a time when the idea of mixing or manipulating vinyl records to create original music would have seemed shocking. American visual artist and musician Christian Marclay certainly remembers that time. Marclay started experimenting with vinyl records as a sound source in the mid 1970s. Effecting the surface of the records, warping, pitch shifting, scratching and processing records in performance, Marclay could arguably be seen as the inventor of turntablism. His techniques were developed parallel to but ignorant of similar techniques used in very different ways by pioneers of hip-hop like Kool DJ Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. While Marclay’s music has precursors in compositions by John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer, he remains one of the earliest musicians focused almost solely on the turntable as instrument.
Christian Marclay was born in born in 1955 in San Rafael, California and soon moved with his family to Geneva, Switzerland. Moving back to the states as a young adult he enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art. Eventually moving to New York City he was eager to participate in the post-punk and no wave scene of the time. In performance Marclay would sing to prerecorded tapes, often accompanied by guitarist Kurt Henry. The duo would use records manipulated to produce repeating, rhythmic loops in lieu of a drummer.
Marclay soon began fusing the worlds of fine art and DIY audio together. Many of his early performances of vinyl manipulation would feature damaged records. Drawn on, scratched and cut up and spliced with different records, the vinyl itself became an art object fit to be viewed in a gallery. He soon started work in sculpture, photography, collage, film and video as well, often accompanying a musical performance. The joining of sound and image is a central focus of Marclay’s art. The most obvious result of this is the object of a physically manipulated record that produces sound.
After his Recycled Records series from the early ‘80s, Marclay released the seminal Record Without A Cover in ’85. An etched, single sided record that held audio made from manipulated records on manipulated turntables on one side and printed text on the other. Part of the text instructs the owner not to store the record in a protective cover as the degeneration and damaged to the object is part of the piece. It’s essentially a record that is being slowly manipulated forever.
Marclay has released a sizable discography over the years with many limited editions serving as art objects. Highlights include ‘89’s More Encores, based on samples of vinyl by artists as diverse as Louis Armstrong, Fred Frith, Martin Denny and Johann Strauss, ‘94’s collaboration with Gunter Muller titled Live Improvisations, the peerless collection of ‘80s recordings released in ‘97 titled Records and the collaboration with Japanese turntable virtuoso Otomo Yoshihide called Moving Parts.
While Records easily serves as the best introduction to Marclay’s most important audio work, the DVD Record Player from 2000 lets us witness the performance aspect of his music. Featuring video shot at four concerts between ’99 and ’00, the DVD is a fascinating document of Marclay’s very tactile approach to making music.
Since 2000 Marclay has exhibited his various strains of visual art all over the world including major galleries in Stockholm, London, Seattle, Los Angeles and New York. Some of his most interesting recent work is in video. Guitar Drag, a video work made in 2000, features a Fender Stratocaster being dragged behind a pickup truck down a road somewhere in Texas. Marclay recorded the audio produced by the event as well and released an accompanying 12”. The sound is huge, noisy and intense, but it’s the implications of the video — from rock star excess via equipment destruction to evoking the tragic death of African American James Byrd, Jr at the hands of the Texas men that ruthlessly dragged him behind a pickup truck — that are the most unique and provocative.
Christian Marclay’s pioneering use of vinyl manipulation and the turntable as sampling instrument helped to pave the way for developments in hip-hop, techno and electroacoustic improvisation that followed. His early recordings endure as fascinating snapshots of a music that involves detailed sound manipulation and hands on process oriented performance. Marclay continues to break new ground with his video art, conjuring strange juxtapositions of images and sounds from pop culture. This artwork continues to focus on Marclay’s central interest in sampling and appropriation art similar to his early work with vinyl records.
