Biography
Christian Marclay pioneered the elevation of the turntable into an artistic practice beyond rap contexts, deploying the device to fragment recordings instead of linking them. He sustained extended collaborations with Downtown improv figures John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, and Butch Morris along with the Kronos Quartet. After a period studying at the Massachusetts College of Art, artistic inspiration from Joseph Beuys merged with musical influence from John Cage and the Fluxus group. He observed the experimental possibilities opened by operating turntables contrary to owners manuals and commenced performances as early as 1979. His techniques encompassed conventional scratching, playback via damaged turntables, physical destruction followed by reassembly of vinyl with the outcomes documented, and the creation of musical juxtapositions through combinations of radically different artists. The 1985 installation Footsteps covered a gallery floor with thousands of records that visitors traversed, after which the resulting discs were packaged for sale. The 1988 LP More Encores presented tributes to various musical figures, among them "John Cage"—assembled by gluing segments from multiple records into a single piece—and "Louis Armstrong," realized through a hand-cranked gramophone that shifted pitch. Although recording activity diminished sharply during the 1990s, Marclay maintained appearances on Zorn projects, among them multiple editions of the Filmworks series. The Atavistic label issued the retrospective Records 1981-1989. Moving Parts appeared in mid-2000.
Albums
