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. 

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

Christian Marclay's first visit to Toronto (that I'm aware of) was for the Ben Portis curated exhibition at Oakville Galleries. The show was Marclay's first solo show in Canada, and the first to focus on his work with cinema, rather than music. It included a work that still remains a favourite today - Up & Out, which combines the visuals from the Antonioni film Blow Up, with the audio from the Brian DePalma quasi-remake, Blow Out.

I was at Art Metropole at the time and we approached Marclay about doing a performance while he was was town, which he shrugged off. He said he wasn't really interested in performing live anymore. "What about a performance with Michael Snow?", we asked, and he agreed instantly. 

Marclay, Snow, Paul Dutton and John Oswald performed to an over-capacity crowd at the Rivoli, and the performance was recorded with the possible aim of a future release. A year later, Portis approached me about co-publishing a double-CD with this performance, and another that he had organized short afterwards, in New York City. 

Ben was the founder of the No Music Festival, in London, Ontario, which took a similar approach of leveraging a local legendary noise band (in his case, the Nihilist Spasm Band) to coax New York performers (Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, Jim O'Rourke, for example) to participate. He had just worked with Rachel Harrison, who he asked to photograph the show for the disc's tray card. 

Ben died last week after his car stalled on the highway. Another car hit him from behind and the car burst into flames. He was rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. 

A memorial is being planned for September. A few brief obituaries can be read at the Canadian Art website, here.

Volumes Book Launch tonight

In 2003, Catherine Crowston and Barbara Fischer co-curated an exhibition called Re-Play that featured myself, David Armstrong Six, Joanne Bristol, Stan Douglas, Raymond Gervais, Rodney Graham, Pascal Grandmaison, Instant Coffee, Tim Lee, Ian Murray, Shannon Oksanen, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Kevin Schmidt, Steven Shearer, Zin Taylor, Ron Terada, Althea Thauberger, and Holly Ward. Re-Play was part of a larger touring exhibition of sound art shows called Sounstracks, that also included Come a Singin' (curated by Andrew Hunter), See Hear! (by Timothy Long and Ben Portis), and Video Heroes (curated by Sylvie Gilbert).

A catalogue for the Soundtracks exhibitions has been in the works every since.

A decade later Christof Migone curated an exhibition called Volume: Hear Here. It featured myself, Alexis O'Hara, Darsha Hewitt, John Oswald, Ian Skedd, Charles Stankievech, Mitchell Akiyama, crys cole, Marla Hlady, Neil Klassen, David Lieberman, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sylvia Matas,
David Merritt, Ryan Park, Juliana Pivato, Alexandre St-Onge, Chiyoko Szlavnics and John Wynne.

Part of the impetus of the second show was to renew efforts to complete the original catalogue, which would now serve as a document of both. It launches tonight at Hart House (7 Hart House Circle, St. George Campus, University of Toronto) from 5 to 8pm. The book (and accompanying 10" vinyl record" is available for sale for $50, and the launch will feature DJ sets by Martin Arnold, Marc Couroux, Mitchell Akiyama.

If you're coming by car, please note the Pan Am games have closed off sections of Harbord Street. For more information, visit the facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1633089103574469/

Deconstruct

(Various ‎Artitsts)
Deconstruct
London, UK: Blast First, 1994
61:41
Edition of 500

Blast First was a sub label of Mute records, founded by Paul Smith to release Sonic Youth records in the UK. The label has put out records and CDs by bands such as The Butthole Surfers, Dinosaur Jr., Labradford, Liars, Pan Sonic, The Raincoats, and Suicide, as well as artworld crossovers such as Glenn Branca and Jeremy Deller's Acid Brass project.

This disk, made in a special arrangement with The Wire Magazine, features a variety of experimental music and audio art, including Christian Marclay, Philip Jeck, and John Oswald. The CD booklet contains pages (text, visuals or both) by each of the participants.

Album covers by artists #3 - Michael Snow

Yesterday I visited Michael Snow for an interview to be published in the spring issue of Magenta magazine. The focus was on his artists' books and records, a surprisingly under-explored area of his practice, given that he's produced a classic in each genre (The Last LP and Cover to Cover – which remains one of the most celebrated artists' book ever). Before I started recording our conversation he showed me an obscure CD compilation for which he had contributed musically, and designed the cover.

Titled Darn It!, the 1994 disk pays tribute to the late poet Paul Haines, who is best known for his lyric contributions to two of Carla Bley's most successful recordings, Escalator Over the Hill and Tropic Appetites. Haines died in 2003, at the age of seventy. His daughter Emily Haines is the leader singer and keyboard player for Metric, and is a member of Broken Social Scene.

I haven't heard the record, but it seems to be akin to the type of wildly eclectic tribute records that Hal Wilner has produced for Nino Rota, Thelonious Monk, Kurt Weill, Charles Mingus, Harry Smith and, er, Walt Disney. Seven years in the making, the double disk features Mary Margaret O'Hara, guitarist Gary Lucas (who played with the late Jeff Buckley, as well as Lou Reed, John Cale, Nick Cave, John Zorn, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Allen Ginsberg and countless others), Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey, Alex Chilton (of Big Star) and Carla Bley, whose 1964 song "Walking Woman" is about Snow's signature Walking Women series. The disk also features several of Snow's musical collaborators, including sound poet Paul Dutton (CCMC, Four Horsemen), Jon Oswald (of Plunderphonics fame, CCMC), Al Mattes, and Jack Vorvis.

The cover design, which features two pull-out accordion-fold inserts, keeps the focus on the lyrics, illustrating stacks of poems by Haines, including stanzas like:

Just when I thought
Bicycles no longer
Existed
I saw a woman on one


Snow was given a single copy of the compilation and left unsure of it's fate, not even confident that it was ever released. It seems to have garnered a couple of reviews, though, and a few copies are floating around for sale (on Ebay, and elsewhere) ranging from twenty dollars to one hundred.