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Presenting an entirely video-based survey of Christian Marclay’s work presents some interesting, and potentially problematic, ways of viewing this artist’s oeuvre. Known primarily as a sound artist for much of his career, Marclay made his name working with records, beginning in the late 1970s at the same time the hip hop community had begun to elevate the role of DJ to an increasingly creative one through new techniques such as scratching. The materiality of the vinyl medium became Marclay’s key motif, exploiting the surface of the disk as being equally, if not more, important than the content recorded onto it. More recently there have been custom-instrument sculptures, such as Lip-lock (2000), a conjoint trumpet-tuba, and Virtuoso (1999), a seven metre long accordion, which would have seemed an ideal fit for the Musee de la Musique, the show’s Parisian partner-venue, which has a programme based on its collection of historic and contemporary musical instruments.
Nevertheless, video has increasingly become a significant strand of Marclay’s practice, often deployed in a way similar to his record-works, as a medium of found content. And although there is not a physical record to be seen in the gallery, be it his Footsteps (1989) installation of tap-dancing recordings to be walked on, or his collaged Recycled Records (1980-1986) cut together like a pie-graph of incongruous releases, this important aspect of his career is still evident in the exhibition through some of the video works. There is Gestures (1999), which acts like a show-reel of Marclay’s record-hacking techniques. And Record Players (1984), which has footage of a group of ‘musicians’ flexing, scraping and smashing records in an orgy of punk-influenced performance art.
The anti-art strategies of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline