Christian Marclay - Video Quartet

[Alastair]

Went to the White Cube gallery in London's trendy Hoxton Square over the weekend to catch this. Here's the publicity for the installation (from the annoyingly over-Flashy http://www.whitecube.com/flash.html).

"White Cube will present the European premiere of Marclay's most recent and possibly most accomplished work to date, the epic Video Quartet, a visual and sonic collage that explores a kind of collective film memory, using extracts from well-known Hollywood movies, with an overlaid, sampled soundtrack. Of its first presentation in the U.S, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith exclaimed, "Marclay has never brought music, sound and image into such perfect, beautiful, funny alignment, nor conflated seeing and hearing so ecstatically…..no amount of naming names, identifying individual movies or describing scenes can account for the work's delicious, fast-paced flow." For this work, Marclay collected thousands of Hollywood movie clips featuring images of hands on keyboards, horns and violins, as well as men and women singing, dancing and engaging in various other acts of making noise. Using a standard laptop editing programme, he then choreographed the unaltered snippets into a dazzling dramaturgical flow. The resulting work is a fourteen minute, four screen DVD projection which brilliantly conflates levels of the real and the artificial from Jimi Hendrix in concert to Elvis in "Jailhouse Rock," and syncopates explosions and pratfalls, lines up trumpeters, pairs piano-players, and strings together movie screams culminating in Maria Callas's famous high C. Video Quartet is a tour de force, an erudite yet highly spirited sampling of the history of music in film and film in music, from a master of the mix."

Well, let me be the first to say that I found it pretty uninspiring. It all seemed a bit facile somehow. There was some hefty recycling of motifs from previous Marclay projects (that extended Callas high C, for instance) and a surprising lack of focus. Far too many shots of fictitious musicians (loads of Kirk Douglas in "Young Man With A Horn") and comedy moments took any sense of a real musical piece away from it. Those Hollywood clips were almost exclusively Jazz related, which is why I've brought it up here, but except some Hendrix and a brief clip of Johnny Rotten shouting "destroy", there was nothing post 1960. It struck me as odd to virtually ignore the last forty years of music in a piece like this. Who did he think his audience was? Did anyone see this in the US? What did you think?

I saw Marclay in the flesh for the first time at the Spitz a few weeks ago and left halfway through, which is unheard of for me. I found his set tedious and (that word again) uninspired, but I think I was in the minority (as usual). Yet his "Records 81-89", "More Encores" and "Record Without A Cover" are three of my favourite records and I love his contributions to Zorn records. I enjoyed both the musical and political sides of "Guitar Drag" too. Is Marclay pandering to the masses, or am I missing something?

[Jon Abbey]

Christian's more a part of the art world than the music one at this point, but his early work was very influential. I personally have a soft spot for him because of his duo disc with Günter Müller and a concert I saw them do here around that time, both of which were very influential on me (as well as Locus Solus).

when he showed up in the audience at the first AMPLIFY festival on the first night, I invited him to sit in with poire_z the next night, partly as a way of saying thanks, and partly because I know the deep respect that Otomo, Günter, ErikM, and the Voice Crack guys have for him and his work. it worked surprisingly well, and most of the set ended up on the poire_z + CD. I haven't seen the show you write about, and I don't go out of my way to see him much here now, but I don't go see Zorn at all anymore either.

[Alastair]

"The Battle of Algiers" from Zorn's "The Big Gundown" was the first time I was aware of Marclay. It made a huge impression on me. I don't think he's done anything with Zorn for the last ten years or so, so you're not missing anything Jon

Perhaps my disappointment was a mixture of a big build up (both in my head, having admired his stuff for years, and by the publicity and the MC) and the fact that what was once new and amazing has become commonplace. Perhaps he's acknowedging this by shying away from solely musical projects these days. I got the impression he had nothing new to say in the live solo context. The right collaborators seem to work though - I enjoyed the Poire Z collaboration you mentioned.

[Alastair]

Originally posted by Jon Abbey
I haven't seen the show you write about, and I don't go out of my way to see him much here now, but I don't go see Zorn at all anymore either.

Are you suggesting I should let go of the past a bit more? I always find that difficult.

[Jon Abbey]

nope, just giving you my own perspective (which you pretty much know anyway).