Christian Marclay | Tape Fall

Christian Marclay

Tape Fall

New York City, USA: The New Museum, 1990

32 × 11 cm.

Edition of 150 

The installation Tape Fall debuted as part of the 1989 New Museum exhibition “Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos,” alongside works by Glenn Branca, John Cage, Zoe Leonard, Ann Hamilton, David Hammons, Cary Noland, and many others. The work features a reel-to-reel tape deck continuously playing a track of dripping water sounds. Suspended nine feet above the gallery floor, the deck is not fitted with a take-up reel, so the tape unspools onto the floor. The resulting pile of audio tape becomes a sculptural form that mirrors the aural experience. A total of 187 reels of tape were used.

Much the way that Footsteps began as an installation of vinyl LPs that were then torn up and sold as editions, here the magnetic tape is collected and bottled. The temptation for Marclay - a fan of puns and wordplay - to call it Bottled Water must've been strong, but was wisely avoided. 

The work is valued at approximately $1500 US. 

"Christian Marclay's installation Tape Fall (1989) is a grower. Not just in the sense that it takes a while for the work's impact to sink in - although it's certainly true that, unlike many apparent one-liners, Tape Fall keeps suggesting interpretations with repeated interaction. No, the installation quite literally grows, slowly but surely, and each visit presents a new version of the art work. Startlingly simple, the piece consists of a reel-to-reel tape player perched high atop an industrial stepladder; magnetic tape plays back a recording of dripping water and, in the absence of a take-up reel, falls the 20 or so feet to the gallery floor, where it accumulates in a messy pile. When the tape runs out a new one is loaded into the machine, and the debris beneath is left in place. Despite the tangle around the base of the ladder, a subtle order prevails: positioned to fall directly on top of a horizontal metal bar, the slowly spilling tape gradually flips and flops over the rod, creating a symmetrical mound as it amasses, ever so slowly. Returning to the gallery is a bit like making repeat visits to Pride Superette, a convenience store only a mile or so from San Francisco MOMA, where the owner, Nabil Kishek, is in the slow process of assembling a ball of rubber bands worthy of the Guinness Book of Records. Despite the gentle pace of both projects, experiencing the mutation at first hand never fails to delight, resulting in an odd collision of simple surprise and Sisyphean sublimity."

- Philip Sherburne, Frieze, 2002