Christian Marclay | Music Box

Christian Marclay

Untitled (Music Box)

Santa Monica, USA: Peter Norton Family Foundation, 2005

13 x 9.5 x 7 cm.

Edition size unknown

You can imagine the excitement when Christian Marclay realized that Silent was an anagram of Listen, and then Tinsel, too, making it perfect for a Christmas music box. 

The work consists of a hinged-lid pine wooden music box accompanied by a card that reads: "Each year, Peter Norton commissions a work of art to celebrate the holiday season. This year's edition is by Christian Marclay... For this project, Marclay has composed 'Tinsel' - a seamless melodic loop without beginning or end that incorporates the gradual slowing of the unwinding mechanism - To play with our expectations of the music box..."

The word SILENT is engraved on the exterior and LISTEN on the interior, a possible nod to Ken Friedman's Fluxus box Open and Shut Case which Marclay would have known well. 

The work was manfucatred by Reuge, a renowned Swiss “Maison” specializing in luxury music boxes and singing bird automata that was founded by Charles Reuge in 1865. In 2005, they were the last remaining music box manufacturers in Switzerland. 

Other multiples and artists’ books in the Peter Norton Christmas series include a porcelain ashtray, a lapel pin, a printed fan, a music box, a CD, a woven blanket, a lifesaver, a dollhouse, trophies, cards, a cup & saucer, a slide viewer, salt & pepper shakers as snow globes,  pop up books by Peter Coffin and Kara Walker, etc., etc.  Participating artists include Robert Lazzarini, Do Ho Suh, Ry Rocklen, Takashi Murakami, Anna Gaskell, Yinka Shonibare, Sanford Biggers, Yasumasa Morimura, Christian Marclay, Vik Muniz, Sanford Biggers, Nina Katchadourian, Marc Swanson, Jim Hodges, Kevin Sommers, Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt, Benjamin Lord, Richard Kostelanetz, Lorna Simpson, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.

 

Christian Marclay | Fourth of July

Christian Marclay

Fourth of July 

New York City, USA: Paula Cooper Gallery, 2010

128 pp., 10 x 7”, softcover

Edition of 1000

Recalling the destructive gestures of Guitar Drag, Footsteps or Record Without A Cover, this artist book features photographs that Marclay took on July 4th, 2005. They were subsequently produced as eight large prints, and torn into forty pieces.  

The images of the marching band at the Independence Day parade in Hyde Park, New York become chaotic fragments of sound, detached from the performers. 

Fourth of July is printed in uncut French folds that the reader must tear open to read. 

Elisabetta Benassi | All I Remember

Elisabetta Benassi

All I Remember 

Rome, Italy: NERO, 2011 

478 pp., 16.5 x 21.5 cm, hardcover

Edition of 1000

Sometimes having the central information of an image denied to the viewer allows us to better understand it, or contemplate it anew. 

All I remember is a collection of four hundred and seventy-seven photographs that Elisabetta Benassi found in the archives of daily newspapers around Italy and the United States, between the years 2008 and 2011. She collected what she considers to be the most significant photos of the 20th century.

Each page of All I remember corresponds to a single photograph, from a collection of approximately 70,000 images dating from the 1920s to the early 1990s. The dates are not arbitrary. They correspond with the introduction of the 35mm Leica camera in 1925, and the first flash bulbs shortly afterwards, which led to the "Golden Age of Photojournalism”. By the 1990’s, digital photography made such archives unnecessary. 

The origins of the work date back to a time the artist visited the “Pommidoro” in Rome, where a an uncashed cheque from November 1, 1975 is framed on the restaurant wall. It is signed by one of Italy’s most celebrated and controversial filmmakers, Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

The next day he was brutally murdered at a beach in Ostia. Pasolini's body was almost unrecognizable, after being savagely beaten and run over several times with his own car. Multiple bones were broken and a metal bar had been used to crush his testicles. After his death, his body had been burned with gasoline. 

Benassi made work about Pasolini over a decade prior to this project, from videos where she interacts with a look-alike, to a replica of the car that ran him over. 

A photo of the car is included in All I Remember, taken on November 2, 1975 by the Associated Press. 

But Benassi’s book only features the backs of these photographs, so we do not see the violent image, merely read it’s typewritten caption on the verso: 

[Rome, 2 Nov. (AP) The car owned by Pier Paolo Pasolini, in which Giuseppe Pelosi was stopped. A non-commissioned officer examines Pasolini’s jacket, which was found inside the car.]

The filmmaker’s name and the name of the man who spent nine years in prison for his murder (and recanted his confession almost thirty years later) are circled in felt-tip pen. 

Other photographs documented upside down feature similar handwritten and typed notes, name, dates, rubber stamps, stickers, newspaper clippings and sometimes other photographs. The detritus of now obsolete filing systems. 

Benassi uses the archive for a different kind of archeology, and together these images form an alternative portrait of the 20th century, where images of historical importance are coupled with those from news stories that came and went.  

"It's a collection of events and non-events in history, rather than the images we are addicted to, evoked by the signs that the reverse of those images traced over time, their use and reuse,” Benassi told Fabio Pariante of Frontrunner magazine. "Reversing history, forcing the links to show its hidden plot, looking at things a second time and reversing this gaze of mine also to the beholder: this interests me.”

These ‘images without images’ recall Christian Marclay’s White Noise (1983, see below) and Leah Singer’s silhouette imagery from discarded rubyliths she collected while archiving the photographic collection at the New York Daily News (below, centre). 

Photographs of Hitler admiring a prototype of the Volkswagen Beetle (a car that was partly his idea) and Ku Klux Klan demonstrations bring to mind a troubling exhibition curated by Kim Simon for TPW many years ago, in which lynching photographs had literally been whitewashed. With the hanging victims reduced to a white outline and the horror diminished, the images invite us to look closer at the gathered crowd - hateful expressions, smiling children and picnicking families in their Sunday best. 

The best, and ultimately most honest, histories tend to trouble the timeline, allowing fact and fiction to intermingle. Errors are uncorrected and alternate histories emerge. Books and films are discussed that were never released, or released under different titles. 

Benassi’s work takes its title from an unpublished Gertrude Stein novel. The back of the photograph of the author may be the only time it is referred to. Web searches for “Gertrude Stein” + “All I remember” returned zero results. 

The picture [which I assume is the one I found below, bottom] is captioned as follows:

“Gertrude Stein left), noted writer, sits with Justin Rey, Mayor of the village where her chateau is situated. Miss Stein remained at her chateau during the four years of German occupation of France. She has just completed a new book, dealing with the human race, entitled “All I Remember”. 

All I remember is available from the publisher, here, for the discounted price of €42.50 (from€50.00). 

 

Christian Marclay | Footsteps

Christian Marclay

Footsteps

Zürich, Switzerland: Rec Rec, 1989

12” vinyl record

Edition of 1000 copies, 100 of which were signed

In December of 1988, Christian Marclay visited a foley booth to record the sound of footsteps. Seven tracks (and a track of tap dancing) were pressed to a single-sided vinyl record. Three and a half thousand copies were pressed up and were taped down on the floor of Zurich’s Shedhalle gallery in 1989. 

Gallery goers walked over the discs and when the installation was complete they were lifted up and boxed, along with a postcard and 90 x 60 cm. poster.

When buyers played the record the recorded sounds of footsteps co-mingled with the actual sounds of the disks being walked over - the scratches and the dirt left behind causing the needle to skip - to create a perfect duet. 

Despite a long, prolific career, I still consider this his true masterpiece. 

Christian Marclay | Telephones

Christian Marclay

Telephones

London, UK: Ivorypress, 2024

148 pp., 5 3/4 x 4 1/8 x 3/4”, hardcover

Edition size unknown

Released earlier this summer, this new artists’ book is an adaptation of Marclay’s 1995 film of the same name. Telephone served as a transitionary work for the artist, who had previously produced mostly sound art works, particularly using the format of the vinyl record. 

After Telephones, Marclay produced the excellent Up and Out in 1998, the breakthrough Video Quartet [below] in 2002, and the 2010 masterpiece The Clock. 

The editing approach in those films began here, creating a dialogue (literally, in this case) between random films. Telephones was edited on two VCRs, from VHS tapes from a local video rental store. The seven and a half-minute montage features an assortment of characters using a variety of phones (all pre-dating smart phones) to create a continuous conversation.  

The spiral bound book version allows readers to mix and match images, creating their own juxtapositions. 

Christian Marclay turns 69 today. 

Christian Marclay + CCMC

Michael Snow, Christian Marclay, Paul Dutton, John Oswald

Christian Marclay + CCMC

Toronto/London, Canada: Art Metropole/Non Musica Rex,  2002

2 CD set

Edition of 1000, 25 of which were signed

When Christian Marclay presented his first Canadian solo exhibition at Oakville Galleries, I approached him about doing a live performance in Toronto. He replied that he was no longer interested in performing live. "What about a performance with Michael Snow?” I asked. He agreed instantly. 

The pair played - alongside sound poet Paul Dutton and plunderphonics artist John Oswald - to an over-capacity crowd at the Rivoli, on December 5th, 2000. Snow performed on electric piano and synthesizer, Marclay on turntables and John Oswald on Alto Saxophone. Paul Dutton played harmonica and performed mostly non-verbal vocals. 

I had the honour of introducing the band and also designing the promotional poster (in a very rudimentary way, using ‘Word Perfect’ to create individual text circles and printing them on acetate overlays, see above). 

The performance was recorded with the possible aim of a future release, which was secured after the foursome reunited in New York City for their second and final performance on October 11, 2001. 

This double CD presents both performances in their entirety. Andrew Di Rosa designed the layout and Rachel Harrison contributed photographs. 

The CD is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC (top image). It can be purchased from Art Metropole for $20, and (shockingly) the signed version remains available for $75.00, here. 

Michael Snow died from pneumonia on this day last year, at the age of 94. 

Norton Family Christmas Greetings

Peter Norton is a programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist, best known for creating Norton AntiVirus, the once-ubiquitous anti-virus and anti-malware software. 

In 1989, Norton and his wife Eileen founded the Peter Norton Family Foundation, which provides financial support to visual and contemporary non-profit arts organizations, as well as human social services organizations. He serves on the board of MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Whitney. 

The Nortons accumulated one of the largest modern contemporary art collections in the United States. ARTnews magazine regularly lists Norton among the world's top two-hundred collectors.

Twenty-five years ago, the Norton Family Christmas Project began commissioning artists to create original, multiple-edition works that were mailed as holiday greetings to friends, colleagues, and selected institutions.  

"My wife and I are active in the world of contemporary art, and some time ago we became embarrassed at the idea of sending out traditional commercial cards at Christmastime when we had so many artists as friends,” he told Gregory Taylor. "So we began commissioning original Christmas greetings, which we send out to our closest friends and colleagues.”

The multiples and artists’ books in the series vary wildly: a porcelain ashtray, a lapel pin, a printed fan, a music box, a CD, a woven blanket, a lifesaver, a dollhouse, trophies, cards, a cup & saucer, a slide viewer, salt & pepper shakers as snow globes,  pop up books by Peter Coffin and Kara Walker, etc., etc.  

Participating artists include Robert Lazzarini, Do Ho Suh, Ry Rocklen, Takashi Murakami, Anna Gaskell, Yinka Shonibare, Sanford Biggers, Yasumasa Morimura, Christian Marclay, Vik Muniz, Sanford Biggers, Nina Katchadourian, Marc Swanson, Jim Hodges, Kevin Sommers, Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt, Benjamin Lord, Richard Kostelanetz, Lorna Simpson, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.