Alt Thursdays, Evening Artist Talks and Presentations Begin with Christian Marclay
09/01/2003
American Museum of the Moving Image
35 Avenue at 36 Street
Astoria, New York, 11106
www.movingimage.us
Christian Marclay will discuss his work following screenings of TELEPHONES and UP AND OUT
The American Museum of the Moving Image will present ALT
Thursdays, a
monthly series of artist talks and screenings, in conjunction with
ALT
DigitalMedia, the new gallery space devoted to probing and
playful
explorations of the computed moving image.
The series opens with Sampling Cinema, a screening and discussion
with New
York-based, Swiss-born artist and musician Christian Marclay on
Thursday,
January 9, 2003, at 7:30 p.m. The event is held in conjunction with the
New York debut of Marclay’s newest installation, “Video
Quartet,” at New
York’s Paula Cooper Gallery. Though known for his work in a
variety of
media, Marclay is best known for performances and recordings that
transformed existing musical recordings into new compositions,
prefiguring
within the avant-garde such movements as ‘turntablism.’ In
the past eight
years, Marclay has turned to visual material from the cinema as the raw
material for his transformations. At the Museum, Marclay will present
his
acclaimed video works UP AND OUT (1998) and TELEPHONES (1995), both of
which characterize the cinematic strain of Marclay’s work, and
function as
a commentary on the nature and interrelationship of recorded sound and
image. In UP AND OUT, Marclay fuses the moving imagery of
Antonioni’s
BLOW-UP (1966) with the soundtrack to BLOW OUT (1981), Brian De
Palma’s
remake of the film. The viewer is cast into a world where sound and
image
are at once disjointed and connected, echoing the position of the
protagonist of each film. Running the full length of Antonioni’s
original,
UP AND OUT proceeds with minimal intervention from the artist. In
contrast, the short, intense TELEPHONES is a seven-minute visual
composition comprised of footage from Hollywood films that foreground
both
the image and sound of the telephone.
About Christian Marclay: New York-based artist Christian Marclay works
in
a variety of disciplines including music, performance, and visual art.
He
is a pioneering turntablist, whose recordings and collaborations with
Sonic Youth, Elliott Sharp, and Otomo Yoshihide, among others, have had
a
definitive impact on the avant-garde music scene over the last twenty
years. Marclay’s sculptural and video installations turn our attention
to
the process of hearing and seeing music. For example, Marclay has
rendered
“impossible instruments,” such as a drumkit that towers from floor to
ceiling, its parts positioned according to their respective pitches in a
visual representation of the sounds they make. For Prosthesis
(2000), he
made a silicone rubber cast of an electric bass guitar. Marclay’s
altered
instruments continue his exploration of situating music and performance
in
the gallery. “It may seem like a contradiction, but I’m interested in
sound, not just for how it sounds, but also for how it looks,” Marclay
has
said. Whether manipulating vinyl records in his performances or
rendering
sculptures from mute instruments, he continually refers to music as the
intersection between the audio and the visual, blurring the distinction
between these two mediums. (Source: Museum of Contemporary Art,
Chicago).
Christian Marclay’s latest work, Video Quartet (2001), is
currently on
view at the Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 West 21 Street in Manhattan.
The series continues on Thursday, February 27 with a panel discussion
featuring artists Camille Utterback, A.C. Chapman, and Toni Dove, who
will
discuss and demonstrate works to be installed in
DigitalMedia that
day. On Thursday, March 13, artists will perform software featured in
the
gallery.
MUSEUM INFORMATION
The American Museum of the Moving Image is dedicated to educating the
public about the art, history, technique, and technology of film,
television, and digital media, and to examining their impact on culture
and society.
It achieves these goals by maintaining the nation’s largest
permanent
collection of moving image artifacts, and by offering the public
exhibitions, film screenings, lectures, seminars, and other education
programs.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 12 p.m.–5 p.m. Saturday and
Sunday,
11 a.m.–6 p.m. Group tours by appointment, Tuesday through Friday,
9:30
a.m.–5 p.m.
Museum Admission: $8.50 for adults; $5.50 for persons over 65 and for
students with ID; $4.50 for children ages 5–18. Children 4 and
under and
Museum members are admitted free.
Film programs: Film screenings are free with Museum admission unless
otherwise noted. Reservation privileges are available to Museum members
only.
Location: 35 Avenue at 36 Street in Astoria.
Subway: R or V trains (R or G on weekends) to Steinway Street. N train
to
Broadway.
Program Information: Telephone: (718) 784-0077; Web site:
The American Museum of the Moving Image occupies a building owned by the
City of New York. With the assistance of the Queens Borough President
and
the Queens Delegation of the New York City Council, the Museum receives
support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Vital
support is also provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Natural Heritage Trust
(administered
by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation), the National Science Foundation, corporations,
foundations,
and individuals.