Alice Sagar Final Major Project: Christian Marclay

The final element of my research towards my final piece is to look at sound art and sound installations as part of my installation. Using this media may be a challenge because I have very little to no experience with the making of sound art or using the equipment. I am interested in the idea of using found objects in any practice of my work.

'I'm interested in the sounds that people dont want; and since when we play a record we dont want to hear the surface noise; the pops and the clicks of the stratches. But those are the sounds that I'm interested in, those are the sounds that I want to use in my music.' -Egg- Christian Marclay (Link to interview)

Over the past 30 years, Christian Marclay has explored the fusion of fine art and audio cultures, transforming sounds and music into a visible, physical form through performance, collage, sculpture, installation, photography and video.

Marclay began his exploration into sound and art through performances with turntables in 1979, while he was still a student. Early work includes a series of ‘Recycled Records’ (1980-86), fragmented and reassembled vinyl records that became hybrid objects that could be played, replete with abrupt leaps in tone and sound. For his ‘Body Mix’ series (1991-92), he stitched together album covers into works to create strange phantasms of music and culture – such as Deutsche Grammaphon conductors with the slender legs of Tina Turner – that bring to mind Surrealist ‘Exquisite Corpses’.

Over the last decade, Marclay has created ambitious work in a variety of media. The video Guitar Drag (2000)(3.11) features a Fender Stratocaster being dragged behind a pick-up truck along rough country roads in Texas. While on one level the work is an expression of Marclay’s interest in creating a new sound, it is also a nod to the guitar-destroying antics of rock stars as well as a reference to the murder of James Byrd Jr., an African-American man dragged to his death behind a pick-up truck.