Christian Marclay

1 Project for the Recycling Plant
2005

Marclay created this series of works—made from various
used electronic goods and discarded urban waste—for
an exhibition held at a recycling plant in Tokyo in 2005.
For Marclay, who gained inspiration for his early deejay
practice when he came across an abandoned record on
the street while a student in Boston, garbage is a statethat strips an object from its original function down to its
raw materials. Here, Marclay documents the recycling
process that breaks down the electronic equipment into
its separate material components. The audience can see
and hear the process on the same devices that are being
recycled, as a kind of musical composition generated bychance. Marclay overlays the multiple transformation ofthese unwanted, discarded objects and gives them newlife as visually and sonically stimulating artworks. They
are also self-referential explorations of the object itself. In
the suite of works on paper titled Studies for Variations
on a Silence, made in preparation for his Recycling Plant
project, Marclay moves documents around on a copy
machine to distort and print over the previous copies,
layering information and forming not a copy, but a uniqueprint.

3 Fast Music
1982

Record Players
1984

In 1979, Marclay formed a band called The Bachelors,
Even (quoting The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
by Marcel Duchamp), which fused together influences
ranging from post-punk to Fluxus performance andbeyond. Marclay’s use of records and turntables asmusical instruments attracted attention in a completely
different way than the hip-hop scene, which was on therise at the time. The idea to treat the record as a musicalinstrument evolved into one of Marclay’s earliest video
work, a recording of his own performance. In Fast Music,
he is seen eating a vinyl record using stop motion
animation. In Record Players, Marclay orchestrates
acoustic sounds made with LPs: hitting, bending,breaking. Marclay asks the audience to listen to therecord itself, not the sound captured in its grooves. Hisdeejay performance also repositions the record as an
object to create live music in the present, not in the pastrecorded in its grooves.

4 Record Without a Cover
2 Mixed Reviews
1999-

Exhibition
Guide

Translating

The long string of text that runs along the wall is acompilation of sound descriptions sampled from various
reviews of musical performances and recordings, foundin newspapers and music magazines, and arranged by
Marclay into a composition of verbal music. Mixed
Reviews is always translated into the language of thecountry in which it is exhibited, every time the lasttranslation becoming the new original to be translated.
The text has been translated many times since its initial
English version. Like the children game of telephone it
keeps transforming itself. It has been translated once
before into Japanese, from the German, for an installation
at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 1999. This exhibit
marks the work’s second time in Japan, but this time it
was translated from Catalan. Mixed Reviews illustrates
Marclay’s interest in incompleteness, with works often
undergoing changes over time. Due to his experiences
traversing between multiple cultures, Marclay has long
been attracted to non-linguistic communication. Hisinterest here lies in the impossibility to translate music
into language, as repeated translation takes us further
and further away from the original reviewers experienceof listening to music.

1985

This record was released in 1985 with no cover orprotective packaging. Thus the accidental damages fromshipping and handling became part of the work, as“noise” blending with the original recording. The more
one plays the record, the more the record’s condition andsound undergo further transformations, accepting its
own entropy and bringing together both past andpresent. In the music industry, “noise” is something thatshould be eliminated at all points of the production
process, from recording to distribution. For Marclay thenoise created by the damaged vinyl is a positive elementthat allows unpredictable outcomes. A reissue of Record
Without a Cover was released in 1999 by the Japaneselabel Locus Solus.

5 Recycled Records
1979 - 1986

In his work as a turntablist, Marclay used multiple
turntables to play records and interact with otherimprovising musicians. Not only did he physically alter
the records, often marking them with markers or stickers
to help finding sounds during performances, he also
made collages by cutting the vinyl discs, slicing andpasting together record fragments as if they were piecesof a puzzle. When actually played, these collages giverise to unexpected musical compositions. Recycled
Records, made as a series between 1979 and 1986,
contradict the idea of the record as a multiple massproduced object. Here it is reborn as a hand-made,unique, one-of-a-kind record that never plays the same
twice.

6 Abstract Music

9 Imaginary Records

1989 - 1990

1988 - 1997

Upon discovering one of the foundational records ofavant-garde jazz, Ornette Coleman’s 1961 album “FreeJazz,” which is illustrated by a Jackson Pollock painting in
its cover, he began to consider the relationship between
music and abstract painting. In art history, theemergence of abstraction has a great deal to do withartists’ longing for the abstract nature of sound, leadingthem to develop approaches that used sound as ananalogy. Because this style of art seemed so effectivewith translating the essence of sound it became popular
for musicians to use abstract paintings by famous andunknown artists alike as album covers. Marclay suggeststhat the use of abstract art on record covers cover may
have been a strategy for record companies to give these
pop objects a “high art” status. Marclay paints over thecover’s printed text to hide the specificity of the album
and musical genre, lending the record a sense ofanonymity and abstraction. His precise brushstrokes
imitate the painting style of the printed cover. Thistransformation gives the plastic multiple from pop culture
a new life as a unique work of art.

In the early 1980s, Marclay went around various thrift
stores and built up a collection of used and unwanted
records costing less than a dollar. The cover designs andillustrations of these records inspired him to imagine
music that he had never heard before. The Imaginary
Records series explores the possibilities of such record
covers to evoke music. Marclay altered and remixed therecord covers, for example, by taking the title from one
album and embedding it into a different cover, or erasing
the background altogether. In some cases, his alterations
allude to the presence of hidden themes like death andrebirth. In the context of Marclay’s practice, records are“lifeless recordings” of “live music,” making them amedium that invokes a two-way metamorphosis
between life and death.

7 Manga Scroll
2010

Non-verbal communication is a hallmark of Japaneseculture, and it can be seen in the diversity of
onomatopoeia in manga, used to express sounds,
movements, and even emotions. It’s only natural that
Marclay, who explores non-verbal acts of translation in
his work, would take a particular interest in
onomatopoeia. For Manga Scroll, Marclay cut out
onomatopoeias from manga originally published in Japanand translated into English for U.S. audiences, stringing
them into a long sound collage. The work takes on theformat of a Japanese picture scroll, originally invented asa narrative system of horizontal illustrations thatsuggests the passage of time. It also functions as a“graphic score” that can be performed by a vocalist.

8 Video Quartet
2002

Video Quartet is one of Marclay’s most well-known
works. It brings together film clips from movies, old andnew, from all around the world. On four screens, acontinuous collage centered around hundreds of scenesof actors playing musical instruments is juxtaposed withscenes of screams, noise, and various sounds. In Video
Quartet, Marclay treats fragments of films, which are inessence visual clips, as sonic material, choreographingthem into an entirely new, balanced composition. While
the selected clips are a comprehensive index of musicalformats such as rock, opera, and musical theater, they are
simultaneously excerpts of famous stars and films,
making them samples of various cultural histories. As theaudience listens and watches, they contemplate and draw
connections to their own memories of the featured films.

10 Photograms
2004

A photogram is a photographic image made by placing
light-obstructing objects directly onto the surface ofsensitized paper and then exposing it to light. Marclay
used records and cassette tapes to allude to theirproperties as analog recording devices. Some of thesephotograms feature enlarged record grooves, which
Marclay created by placing records directly into a
photographic enlarger instead of using film. By enlarging
the grooves, Marclay emphasizes the fundamental
physicality of records where the needle rubbing thegrooves is what creates sound, in contrast with
contemporary digital recording. Modernist artists, led by
László Moholy-Nagy, proved with their photograms that
it was possible to go beyond the arbitrary tools available
by making images directly with light. One of Marclay's
cameraless work show his hand holding a record. It
reveals the manipulating presence of the artist at work
touching the physical substance of the medium like adeejay selecting a record.

11 Shuffle2007

To Be Continued
2016

Published as a graphic score, Shuffle is a collection of 75
photographs taken by Marclay over the course of his
everyday wanderings. These photographs of musicalnotations found in mundane settings, such as shop
awnings, chocolate tins, and T-shirts are evidence ofMarclay’s keen eye for musical notes waiting to bediscovered and played. The box contains these
instructions from the artist: “This deck of cards can beused as a musical score. Shuffle the deck and draw yourcards. Create a sequence using as many or as few of thecards as you wish. Play alone or with others. Invent yourown rules. Sounds may be generated or simply
imagined.” To Be Continued, a collage from comics, waspublished as a graphic score in the form of a comic bookto be interpreted by an ensemble of guitar, drums, bass,
saxophone, and flute.

12 Body Mix
1991 - 1992

The sexual politics of commercial packaging in music has
always been of interest to Marclay, who has constantly
explored the ways that music is symbolized andrepresented in society. Previously, Marclay presented acollection of record covers from classical music showing
conductors with the title “Dictators.” In the series Body
Mix, Marclay creates collages by sewing together two
standard images often seen on album covers—the heads
and torsos of men such as rock stars and conductors thatare presented as dominant, iconic figures, and the lower
body parts of anonymous women. This minimal yet
striking visual manipulation serves to challenge theportrayal of exaggerated masculinity, creating a chimeral
image of different genders. The collision of images alsoenables us to visually “listen” to two or more records
simultaneously.

Christian Marclay

1 Project for the Recycling Plant
2005

Marclay created this series of works—made from various
used electronic goods and discarded urban waste—for
an exhibition held at a recycling plant in Tokyo in 2005.
For Marclay, who gained inspiration for his early deejay
practice when he came across an abandoned record on
the street while a student in Boston, garbage is a statethat strips an object from its original function down to its
raw materials. Here, Marclay documents the recycling
process that breaks down the electronic equipment into
its separate material components. The audience can see
and hear the process on the same devices that are being
recycled, as a kind of musical composition generated bychance. Marclay overlays the multiple transformation ofthese unwanted, discarded objects and gives them newlife as visually and sonically stimulating artworks. They
are also self-referential explorations of the object itself. In
the suite of works on paper titled Studies for Variations
on a Silence, made in preparation for his Recycling Plant
project, Marclay moves documents around on a copy
machine to distort and print over the previous copies,
layering information and forming not a copy, but a uniqueprint.

3 Fast Music
1982

Record Players
1984

In 1979, Marclay formed a band called The Bachelors,
Even (quoting The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
by Marcel Duchamp), which fused together influences
ranging from post-punk to Fluxus performance andbeyond. Marclay’s use of records and turntables asmusical instruments attracted attention in a completely
different way than the hip-hop scene, which was on therise at the time. The idea to treat the record as a musicalinstrument evolved into one of Marclay’s earliest video
work, a recording of his own performance. In Fast Music,
he is seen eating a vinyl record using stop motion
animation. In Record Players, Marclay orchestrates
acoustic sounds made with LPs: hitting, bending,breaking. Marclay asks the audience to listen to therecord itself, not the sound captured in its grooves. Hisdeejay performance also repositions the record as an
object to create live music in the present, not in the pastrecorded in its grooves.

4 Record Without a Cover
2 Mixed Reviews
1999-

Exhibition
Guide

Translating

The long string of text that runs along the wall is acompilation of sound descriptions sampled from various
reviews of musical performances and recordings, foundin newspapers and music magazines, and arranged by
Marclay into a composition of verbal music. Mixed
Reviews is always translated into the language of thecountry in which it is exhibited, every time the lasttranslation becoming the new original to be translated.
The text has been translated many times since its initial
English version. Like the children game of telephone it
keeps transforming itself. It has been translated once
before into Japanese, from the German, for an installation
at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 1999. This exhibit
marks the work’s second time in Japan, but this time it
was translated from Catalan. Mixed Reviews illustrates
Marclay’s interest in incompleteness, with works often
undergoing changes over time. Due to his experiences
traversing between multiple cultures, Marclay has long
been attracted to non-linguistic communication. Hisinterest here lies in the impossibility to translate music
into language, as repeated translation takes us further
and further away from the original reviewers experienceof listening to music.

1985

This record was released in 1985 with no cover orprotective packaging. Thus the accidental damages fromshipping and handling became part of the work, as“noise” blending with the original recording. The more
one plays the record, the more the record’s condition andsound undergo further transformations, accepting its
own entropy and bringing together both past andpresent. In the music industry, “noise” is something thatshould be eliminated at all points of the production
process, from recording to distribution. For Marclay thenoise created by the damaged vinyl is a positive elementthat allows unpredictable outcomes. A reissue of Record
Without a Cover was released in 1999 by the Japaneselabel Locus Solus.

5 Recycled Records
1979 - 1986

In his work as a turntablist, Marclay used multiple
turntables to play records and interact with otherimprovising musicians. Not only did he physically alter
the records, often marking them with markers or stickers
to help finding sounds during performances, he also
made collages by cutting the vinyl discs, slicing andpasting together record fragments as if they were piecesof a puzzle. When actually played, these collages giverise to unexpected musical compositions. Recycled
Records, made as a series between 1979 and 1986,
contradict the idea of the record as a multiple massproduced object. Here it is reborn as a hand-made,unique, one-of-a-kind record that never plays the same
twice.

6 Abstract Music

9 Imaginary Records

1989 - 1990

1988 - 1997

Upon discovering one of the foundational records ofavant-garde jazz, Ornette Coleman’s 1961 album “FreeJazz,” which is illustrated by a Jackson Pollock painting in
its cover, he began to consider the relationship between
music and abstract painting. In art history, theemergence of abstraction has a great deal to do withartists’ longing for the abstract nature of sound, leadingthem to develop approaches that used sound as ananalogy. Because this style of art seemed so effectivewith translating the essence of sound it became popular
for musicians to use abstract paintings by famous andunknown artists alike as album covers. Marclay suggeststhat the use of abstract art on record covers cover may
have been a strategy for record companies to give these
pop objects a “high art” status. Marclay paints over thecover’s printed text to hide the specificity of the album
and musical genre, lending the record a sense ofanonymity and abstraction. His precise brushstrokes
imitate the painting style of the printed cover. Thistransformation gives the plastic multiple from pop culture
a new life as a unique work of art.

In the early 1980s, Marclay went around various thrift
stores and built up a collection of used and unwanted
records costing less than a dollar. The cover designs andillustrations of these records inspired him to imagine
music that he had never heard before. The Imaginary
Records series explores the possibilities of such record
covers to evoke music. Marclay altered and remixed therecord covers, for example, by taking the title from one
album and embedding it into a different cover, or erasing
the background altogether. In some cases, his alterations
allude to the presence of hidden themes like death andrebirth. In the context of Marclay’s practice, records are“lifeless recordings” of “live music,” making them amedium that invokes a two-way metamorphosis
between life and death.

7 Manga Scroll
2010

Non-verbal communication is a hallmark of Japaneseculture, and it can be seen in the diversity of
onomatopoeia in manga, used to express sounds,
movements, and even emotions. It’s only natural that
Marclay, who explores non-verbal acts of translation in
his work, would take a particular interest in
onomatopoeia. For Manga Scroll, Marclay cut out
onomatopoeias from manga originally published in Japanand translated into English for U.S. audiences, stringing
them into a long sound collage. The work takes on theformat of a Japanese picture scroll, originally invented asa narrative system of horizontal illustrations thatsuggests the passage of time. It also functions as a“graphic score” that can be performed by a vocalist.

8 Video Quartet
2002

Video Quartet is one of Marclay’s most well-known
works. It brings together film clips from movies, old andnew, from all around the world. On four screens, acontinuous collage centered around hundreds of scenesof actors playing musical instruments is juxtaposed withscenes of screams, noise, and various sounds. In Video
Quartet, Marclay treats fragments of films, which are inessence visual clips, as sonic material, choreographingthem into an entirely new, balanced composition. While
the selected clips are a comprehensive index of musicalformats such as rock, opera, and musical theater, they are
simultaneously excerpts of famous stars and films,
making them samples of various cultural histories. As theaudience listens and watches, they contemplate and draw
connections to their own memories of the featured films.

10 Photograms
2004

A photogram is a photographic image made by placing
light-obstructing objects directly onto the surface ofsensitized paper and then exposing it to light. Marclay
used records and cassette tapes to allude to theirproperties as analog recording devices. Some of thesephotograms feature enlarged record grooves, which
Marclay created by placing records directly into a
photographic enlarger instead of using film. By enlarging
the grooves, Marclay emphasizes the fundamental
physicality of records where the needle rubbing thegrooves is what creates sound, in contrast with
contemporary digital recording. Modernist artists, led by
László Moholy-Nagy, proved with their photograms that
it was possible to go beyond the arbitrary tools available
by making images directly with light. One of Marclay's
cameraless work show his hand holding a record. It
reveals the manipulating presence of the artist at work
touching the physical substance of the medium like adeejay selecting a record.

11 Shuffle2007

To Be Continued
2016

Published as a graphic score, Shuffle is a collection of 75
photographs taken by Marclay over the course of his
everyday wanderings. These photographs of musicalnotations found in mundane settings, such as shop
awnings, chocolate tins, and T-shirts are evidence ofMarclay’s keen eye for musical notes waiting to bediscovered and played. The box contains these
instructions from the artist: “This deck of cards can beused as a musical score. Shuffle the deck and draw yourcards. Create a sequence using as many or as few of thecards as you wish. Play alone or with others. Invent yourown rules. Sounds may be generated or simply
imagined.” To Be Continued, a collage from comics, waspublished as a graphic score in the form of a comic bookto be interpreted by an ensemble of guitar, drums, bass,
saxophone, and flute.

12 Body Mix
1991 - 1992

The sexual politics of commercial packaging in music has
always been of interest to Marclay, who has constantly
explored the ways that music is symbolized andrepresented in society. Previously, Marclay presented acollection of record covers from classical music showing
conductors with the title “Dictators.” In the series Body
Mix, Marclay creates collages by sewing together two
standard images often seen on album covers—the heads
and torsos of men such as rock stars and conductors thatare presented as dominant, iconic figures, and the lower
body parts of anonymous women. This minimal yet
striking visual manipulation serves to challenge theportrayal of exaggerated masculinity, creating a chimeral
image of different genders. The collision of images alsoenables us to visually “listen” to two or more records
simultaneously.

Christian Marclay

1 Project for the Recycling Plant
2005

Marclay created this series of works—made from various
used electronic goods and discarded urban waste—for
an exhibition held at a recycling plant in Tokyo in 2005.
For Marclay, who gained inspiration for his early deejay
practice when he came across an abandoned record on
the street while a student in Boston, garbage is a statethat strips an object from its original function down to its
raw materials. Here, Marclay documents the recycling
process that breaks down the electronic equipment into
its separate material components. The audience can see
and hear the process on the same devices that are being
recycled, as a kind of musical composition generated bychance. Marclay overlays the multiple transformation ofthese unwanted, discarded objects and gives them newlife as visually and sonically stimulating artworks. They
are also self-referential explorations of the object itself. In
the suite of works on paper titled Studies for Variations
on a Silence, made in preparation for his Recycling Plant
project, Marclay moves documents around on a copy
machine to distort and print over the previous copies,
layering information and forming not a copy, but a uniqueprint.

3 Fast Music
1982

Record Players
1984

In 1979, Marclay formed a band called The Bachelors,
Even (quoting The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
by Marcel Duchamp), which fused together influences
ranging from post-punk to Fluxus performance andbeyond. Marclay’s use of records and turntables asmusical instruments attracted attention in a completely
different way than the hip-hop scene, which was on therise at the time. The idea to treat the record as a musicalinstrument evolved into one of Marclay’s earliest video
work, a recording of his own performance. In Fast Music,
he is seen eating a vinyl record using stop motion
animation. In Record Players, Marclay orchestrates
acoustic sounds made with LPs: hitting, bending,breaking. Marclay asks the audience to listen to therecord itself, not the sound captured in its grooves. Hisdeejay performance also repositions the record as an
object to create live music in the present, not in the pastrecorded in its grooves.

4 Record Without a Cover
2 Mixed Reviews
1999-

Exhibition
Guide

Translating

The long string of text that runs along the wall is acompilation of sound descriptions sampled from various
reviews of musical performances and recordings, foundin newspapers and music magazines, and arranged by
Marclay into a composition of verbal music. Mixed
Reviews is always translated into the language of thecountry in which it is exhibited, every time the lasttranslation becoming the new original to be translated.
The text has been translated many times since its initial
English version. Like the children game of telephone it
keeps transforming itself. It has been translated once
before into Japanese, from the German, for an installation
at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in 1999. This exhibit
marks the work’s second time in Japan, but this time it
was translated from Catalan. Mixed Reviews illustrates
Marclay’s interest in incompleteness, with works often
undergoing changes over time. Due to his experiences
traversing between multiple cultures, Marclay has long
been attracted to non-linguistic communication. Hisinterest here lies in the impossibility to translate music
into language, as repeated translation takes us further
and further away from the original reviewers experienceof listening to music.

1985

This record was released in 1985 with no cover orprotective packaging. Thus the accidental damages fromshipping and handling became part of the work, as“noise” blending with the original recording. The more
one plays the record, the more the record’s condition andsound undergo further transformations, accepting its
own entropy and bringing together both past andpresent. In the music industry, “noise” is something thatshould be eliminated at all points of the production
process, from recording to distribution. For Marclay thenoise created by the damaged vinyl is a positive elementthat allows unpredictable outcomes. A reissue of Record
Without a Cover was released in 1999 by the Japaneselabel Locus Solus.

5 Recycled Records
1979 - 1986

In his work as a turntablist, Marclay used multiple
turntables to play records and interact with otherimprovising musicians. Not only did he physically alter
the records, often marking them with markers or stickers
to help finding sounds during performances, he also
made collages by cutting the vinyl discs, slicing andpasting together record fragments as if they were piecesof a puzzle. When actually played, these collages giverise to unexpected musical compositions. Recycled
Records, made as a series between 1979 and 1986,
contradict the idea of the record as a multiple massproduced object. Here it is reborn as a hand-made,unique, one-of-a-kind record that never plays the same
twice.

6 Abstract Music

9 Imaginary Records

1989 - 1990

1988 - 1997

Upon discovering one of the foundational records ofavant-garde jazz, Ornette Coleman’s 1961 album “FreeJazz,” which is illustrated by a Jackson Pollock painting in
its cover, he began to consider the relationship between
music and abstract painting. In art history, theemergence of abstraction has a great deal to do withartists’ longing for the abstract nature of sound, leadingthem to develop approaches that used sound as ananalogy. Because this style of art seemed so effectivewith translating the essence of sound it became popular
for musicians to use abstract paintings by famous andunknown artists alike as album covers. Marclay suggeststhat the use of abstract art on record covers cover may
have been a strategy for record companies to give these
pop objects a “high art” status. Marclay paints over thecover’s printed text to hide the specificity of the album
and musical genre, lending the record a sense ofanonymity and abstraction. His precise brushstrokes
imitate the painting style of the printed cover. Thistransformation gives the plastic multiple from pop culture
a new life as a unique work of art.

In the early 1980s, Marclay went around various thrift
stores and built up a collection of used and unwanted
records costing less than a dollar. The cover designs andillustrations of these records inspired him to imagine
music that he had never heard before. The Imaginary
Records series explores the possibilities of such record
covers to evoke music. Marclay altered and remixed therecord covers, for example, by taking the title from one
album and embedding it into a different cover, or erasing
the background altogether. In some cases, his alterations
allude to the presence of hidden themes like death andrebirth. In the context of Marclay’s practice, records are“lifeless recordings” of “live music,” making them amedium that invokes a two-way metamorphosis
between life and death.

7 Manga Scroll
2010

Non-verbal communication is a hallmark of Japaneseculture, and it can be seen in the diversity of
onomatopoeia in manga, used to express sounds,
movements, and even emotions. It’s only natural that
Marclay, who explores non-verbal acts of translation in
his work, would take a particular interest in
onomatopoeia. For Manga Scroll, Marclay cut out
onomatopoeias from manga originally published in Japanand translated into English for U.S. audiences, stringing
them into a long sound collage. The work takes on theformat of a Japanese picture scroll, originally invented asa narrative system of horizontal illustrations thatsuggests the passage of time. It also functions as a“graphic score” that can be performed by a vocalist.

8 Video Quartet
2002

Video Quartet is one of Marclay’s most well-known
works. It brings together film clips from movies, old andnew, from all around the world. On four screens, acontinuous collage centered around hundreds of scenesof actors playing musical instruments is juxtaposed withscenes of screams, noise, and various sounds. In Video
Quartet, Marclay treats fragments of films, which are inessence visual clips, as sonic material, choreographingthem into an entirely new, balanced composition. While
the selected clips are a comprehensive index of musicalformats such as rock, opera, and musical theater, they are
simultaneously excerpts of famous stars and films,
making them samples of various cultural histories. As theaudience listens and watches, they contemplate and draw
connections to their own memories of the featured films.

10 Photograms
2004

A photogram is a photographic image made by placing
light-obstructing objects directly onto the surface ofsensitized paper and then exposing it to light. Marclay
used records and cassette tapes to allude to theirproperties as analog recording devices. Some of thesephotograms feature enlarged record grooves, which
Marclay created by placing records directly into a
photographic enlarger instead of using film. By enlarging
the grooves, Marclay emphasizes the fundamental
physicality of records where the needle rubbing thegrooves is what creates sound, in contrast with
contemporary digital recording. Modernist artists, led by
László Moholy-Nagy, proved with their photograms that
it was possible to go beyond the arbitrary tools available
by making images directly with light. One of Marclay's
cameraless work show his hand holding a record. It
reveals the manipulating presence of the artist at work
touching the physical substance of the medium like adeejay selecting a record.

11 Shuffle2007

To Be Continued
2016

Published as a graphic score, Shuffle is a collection of 75
photographs taken by Marclay over the course of his
everyday wanderings. These photographs of musicalnotations found in mundane settings, such as shop
awnings, chocolate tins, and T-shirts are evidence ofMarclay’s keen eye for musical notes waiting to bediscovered and played. The box contains these
instructions from the artist: “This deck of cards can beused as a musical score. Shuffle the deck and draw yourcards. Create a sequence using as many or as few of thecards as you wish. Play alone or with others. Invent yourown rules. Sounds may be generated or simply
imagined.” To Be Continued, a collage from comics, waspublished as a graphic score in the form of a comic bookto be interpreted by an ensemble of guitar, drums, bass,
saxophone, and flute.

12 Body Mix
1991 - 1992

The sexual politics of commercial packaging in music has
always been of interest to Marclay, who has constantly
explored the ways that music is symbolized andrepresented in society. Previously, Marclay presented acollection of record covers from classical music showing
conductors with the title “Dictators.” In the series Body
Mix, Marclay creates collages by sewing together two
standard images often seen on album covers—the heads
and torsos of men such as rock stars and conductors thatare presented as dominant, iconic figures, and the lower
body parts of anonymous women. This minimal yet
striking visual manipulation serves to challenge theportrayal of exaggerated masculinity, creating a chimeral
image of different genders. The collision of images alsoenables us to visually “listen” to two or more records
simultaneously.

15 Screams

1988

2018 - 2019

Since the late 1980s, Marclay has used foundphotographs with ties to sound. Chorus II consists of aseries of black and white close-ups of open mouths,
made by rephotographing images found in magazinesand placing them in old antique frames. The cropping
introduces ambiguity, disguising the original emotions
and states of the people involved. Marclay arranges theframes in an oval formation, as if to give shape to a muchlarger mouth. According to this composition, the array ofmouths comes to look like a choir, an ensemble brought
together by the artist. “Inaudible music” is one of themain themes that Marclay has explored throughout his
career. While the voices of the chorus cannot be heard,
we can each imagine what they sound like and the natureof the sounds by comparing the images with memories ofour own bodies. Marclay allows photographs, static
documents that capture a single moment of the past, tocome alive in the present as they create different sounds
for every viewer.

Faces in the act of vocalization, which suggest sounds
but cannot be heard, are an important motif for Marclay.
To create the woodcut prints series Screams, Marclay cut
out fragments of screaming faces found in Japanesemanga and other comic books and collaged them into
newly restructured faces. The small collages were
scanned and enlarged, then carved into large plywood
sheets. Lastly, these woodblocks were printed using an
etching press. In this series, Marclay references Edvard
Munch’s The Scream. He replaces the sound waves
conveyed by Munch’s array of swirling lines surrounding
the figure with the unique texture of the plywood
woodgrain. The technique of expressing invisible energy
through the use of lines is often seen in Japanese manga,and Marclay’s translation/conversion of manga into art isreminiscent of the significant influence of Ukiyo-e,Japanese ink wash painting, on Munch’s work. Theselarge images in which multiple reference points coalesce
stimulate viewers’ memories, thoughts, and feelings.

14 Actions

16 Ephemera: A Musical Score

2013 - 2014

2009

Actions is a series of work that visualizes the numerous
translations, conversions, and changes that take place
during the process of artistic production. Marclay
samples movements in art history that revolve aroundengaging with the canvas, bringing together elements ofaction painting, which sheds a light on the physicalmotion involved with the act of painting, and pop art,
which uses its silkscreen technique to print comics
without actually drawing. Marclay performed a “score”
that represents the dripping and splashing found in
manga onomatopoeia by dropping paint onto a panel laidout on the floor from high above, and throwing paintagainst a canvas propped up on the wall. After hecompleted this self-described “performance that only hehimself can listen to,” he used silkscreen to overlay the
results of his endeavors with the original onomatopoetic
collages on which they were based. In the process of thistranslation, which turns cause and effect on its head byshifting back and forth between visual and sonic
impetus, liquid objects turn solid, wet ones become dry.
Marclay attempts to facilitate a crossing point between apainting with an essence that belongs exclusively to thepast, and sounds that exist only in the present.

Fragments of Marclay’s eclectic collection of newspaper
advertisements, magazine illustrations, restaurant
menus, candy wrappers, and other disposable printed
matter decorated with musical notations were
photographed and reproduced as twenty-eight unboundprints. These images constitute a score that can beorganized and interpreted using one or more
instruments. Marclay sheds a fleeting light on theseephemeral objects—not meant to be retained orpreserved, but used for only a short time. These shortlived images remind us of how, before recording
equipment existed, music captured the hearts of so many
precisely because of the way it vanishes the moment of
its birth.

17 Graffiti Composition
2002

Investigations
2018

At the 1996 Sonambiente sound art festival in Berlin,
Marclay plastered 5,000 blank posters of sheet music
throughout the city. Passerby freely added in musicalnotes, drawings, words, and all sorts of graffiti. Somepeople wrote on top of previous inscriptions. After sometime, Marclay returned to photograph these posters. He
selected 150 photographs to turn into a score. Musicians
are free to select any number of them for use inperformances or as inspiration for writing their own
music.
First performed in 2018 at the Huddersfield Music
Festival, Investigations is a graphic score meant to beinterpreted by a large ensemble of pianists. It premieredwith 20 pianos. Marclay made the score from a collectionof found and cropped images of pianists. The performers
are asked to decipher each image, and reconstruct thesound seen in each image, writing the notes on theprovided staves, and also reenacting the body gestures.

18 Screen Play2005

Screen Play is a silent video montage compiled from oldfilm footage on which Marclay overlaid simple, colorful
digital animations of lines and dots, reminiscent of thestaffs and notes of a musical score. The work functions
as a graphic score to be interpreted by musicians, where
the abstract animations provide visual instructions
regarding the rhythm and duration. While the majority of
Marclay’s graphic scores are not shown to the audienceduring the performance and are musical notations meant
only for the performer, Screen Play is projected for all tosee.

19 Surround Sounds
2014 - 2015

Surround Sounds is an immersive, silent video installationthat uses onomatopoeia from comics. Marclay animatesthe maelstrom of words scanned from comic books in a
way that suggests their acoustic properties, providing
viewers with an experience for the imagination. “SLAM”
dashes against the wall, “POP” bursts like a bubble, and“BEEP” blinks persistently, while “KLINK” gently collide
against one another. For Marclay, silence reveals theexistence of sound via its absence. In this silent space,
the audience has to imagine sound through sight,
surrounded into a made-up symphony powered bymemories.

20 Faces2020

In 2020, as the world struggled through the coronavirus
pandemic, Marclay worked in isolation, continuing to
produce small collages made from cut and torn
fragments from comic books. Although he has long
explored screaming faces as a motif that merges soundand image, here the faces are constructed by the
dissonance of the various onomatopoeia, or noise itself.
“Voice” is not only a concrete sound, but also a metaphor
for human will and emotion. The global pandemic served
as an opportunity to visualize the anxiety and frustration
rampant within the world, as reflected through social
movements such as Black Lives Matter or the fightagainst climate change. Marclay's collages evoke
catharsis and empathy for the many voices and emotions
that have been hidden away behind masks.

21 No!
2020

No! is a portfolio of 15 prints made from collages using
comic book fragments, and conceived as a graphic score
for a solo voice. Unlike Manga Scroll, which is acomposition consisting of onomatopoeias disconnectedfrom their generative actions, this work shows more of
the context in which these fragments were sampled
from, thus prompting the performers to present a
rendition of the emotional states and body movements
illustrated. The resulting work superimposes many
meanings, including political and social circumstances,
onto the primal human expression of resistance, “no!”,while enabling us to experience shared emotions, thefundamental function of music.

22 Mixed Reviews (Japanese)
2021

When Helen Keller met with prominent opera singer
Enrico Caruso, she placed her fingers upon his lips andthroat in order to experience his performance. Ever since
producing the work Keller and Caruso (2000), whichdocuments this encounter, Marclay has continued tomaintain an interest in the expression of sound by those
who are deaf and hard of hearing. Mixed Reviews(Japanese) is a silent video of a deaf performer using sign
language and body language to translate Mixed Reviews(1999-2021), the collaged string of text describing musicthat is presented at the beginning of the exhibition.
Marclay states, “There's a tremendous loss between theoriginal music and these silent gestures, but you still get
a sense that it's music.” Here, the impossibility oftranslation becomes the key to opening another avenue
for shared experience. This exhibition, so full of music,
even if you cannot hear it, begins and ends with two
different versions of the same work.

Christian Marclay Translating Exhibition Guide November 20th, 2021 - February 23rd, 2022 Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

13 Chorus II

14

15

9

16

8
3
10

7
5

11

13

18

17

10

12

6

20
4
21

19

22
3

1

1 Project for the Recycling Plant
2005

2 Mixed Reviews
1999-

3 Fast Music2

9 Imaginary Records
1988 - 1997

10 Photograms
2004

11 Shuffle

1982

2007

Record Players

To Be Continued

1984

2016

4 Record Without a Cover1985

5 Recycled Records
1979 - 1986

6 Abstract Music
1989 - 1990

7 Manga Scroll
2010

8 Video Quartet
2002

17 Graffiti Composition
2002

Investigations
2018

18 Screen Play2005

19 Surround Sounds
2014 - 2015

12 Body Mix

20 Faces1991 - 1992

2020

13 Chorus II
1988

14 Actions
2013 - 201415 Screams
2018 - 201916 Ephemera: A Musical Score
2009

21 No!
2020

22 Mixed Reviews (Japanese)2021

15 Screams

1988

2018 - 2019

Since the late 1980s, Marclay has used foundphotographs with ties to sound. Chorus II consists of aseries of black and white close-ups of open mouths,
made by rephotographing images found in magazinesand placing them in old antique frames. The cropping
introduces ambiguity, disguising the original emotions
and states of the people involved. Marclay arranges theframes in an oval formation, as if to give shape to a muchlarger mouth. According to this composition, the array ofmouths comes to look like a choir, an ensemble brought
together by the artist. “Inaudible music” is one of themain themes that Marclay has explored throughout his
career. While the voices of the chorus cannot be heard,
we can each imagine what they sound like and the natureof the sounds by comparing the images with memories ofour own bodies. Marclay allows photographs, static
documents that capture a single moment of the past, tocome alive in the present as they create different sounds
for every viewer.

Faces in the act of vocalization, which suggest sounds
but cannot be heard, are an important motif for Marclay.
To create the woodcut prints series Screams, Marclay cut
out fragments of screaming faces found in Japanesemanga and other comic books and collaged them into
newly restructured faces. The small collages were
scanned and enlarged, then carved into large plywood
sheets. Lastly, these woodblocks were printed using an
etching press. In this series, Marclay references Edvard
Munch’s The Scream. He replaces the sound waves
conveyed by Munch’s array of swirling lines surrounding
the figure with the unique texture of the plywood
woodgrain. The technique of expressing invisible energy
through the use of lines is often seen in Japanese manga,and Marclay’s translation/conversion of manga into art isreminiscent of the significant influence of Ukiyo-e,Japanese ink wash painting, on Munch’s work. Theselarge images in which multiple reference points coalesce
stimulate viewers’ memories, thoughts, and feelings.

14 Actions

16 Ephemera: A Musical Score

2013 - 2014

2009

Actions is a series of work that visualizes the numerous
translations, conversions, and changes that take place
during the process of artistic production. Marclay
samples movements in art history that revolve aroundengaging with the canvas, bringing together elements ofaction painting, which sheds a light on the physicalmotion involved with the act of painting, and pop art,
which uses its silkscreen technique to print comics
without actually drawing. Marclay performed a “score”
that represents the dripping and splashing found in
manga onomatopoeia by dropping paint onto a panel laidout on the floor from high above, and throwing paintagainst a canvas propped up on the wall. After hecompleted this self-described “performance that only hehimself can listen to,” he used silkscreen to overlay the
results of his endeavors with the original onomatopoetic
collages on which they were based. In the process of thistranslation, which turns cause and effect on its head byshifting back and forth between visual and sonic
impetus, liquid objects turn solid, wet ones become dry.
Marclay attempts to facilitate a crossing point between apainting with an essence that belongs exclusively to thepast, and sounds that exist only in the present.

Fragments of Marclay’s eclectic collection of newspaper
advertisements, magazine illustrations, restaurant
menus, candy wrappers, and other disposable printed
matter decorated with musical notations were
photographed and reproduced as twenty-eight unboundprints. These images constitute a score that can beorganized and interpreted using one or more
instruments. Marclay sheds a fleeting light on theseephemeral objects—not meant to be retained orpreserved, but used for only a short time. These shortlived images remind us of how, before recording
equipment existed, music captured the hearts of so many
precisely because of the way it vanishes the moment of
its birth.

17 Graffiti Composition
2002

Investigations
2018

At the 1996 Sonambiente sound art festival in Berlin,
Marclay plastered 5,000 blank posters of sheet music
throughout the city. Passerby freely added in musicalnotes, drawings, words, and all sorts of graffiti. Somepeople wrote on top of previous inscriptions. After sometime, Marclay returned to photograph these posters. He
selected 150 photographs to turn into a score. Musicians
are free to select any number of them for use inperformances or as inspiration for writing their own
music.
First performed in 2018 at the Huddersfield Music
Festival, Investigations is a graphic score meant to beinterpreted by a large ensemble of pianists. It premieredwith 20 pianos. Marclay made the score from a collectionof found and cropped images of pianists. The performers
are asked to decipher each image, and reconstruct thesound seen in each image, writing the notes on theprovided staves, and also reenacting the body gestures.

18 Screen Play2005

Screen Play is a silent video montage compiled from oldfilm footage on which Marclay overlaid simple, colorful
digital animations of lines and dots, reminiscent of thestaffs and notes of a musical score. The work functions
as a graphic score to be interpreted by musicians, where
the abstract animations provide visual instructions
regarding the rhythm and duration. While the majority of
Marclay’s graphic scores are not shown to the audienceduring the performance and are musical notations meant
only for the performer, Screen Play is projected for all tosee.

19 Surround Sounds
2014 - 2015

Surround Sounds is an immersive, silent video installationthat uses onomatopoeia from comics. Marclay animatesthe maelstrom of words scanned from comic books in a
way that suggests their acoustic properties, providing
viewers with an experience for the imagination. “SLAM”
dashes against the wall, “POP” bursts like a bubble, and“BEEP” blinks persistently, while “KLINK” gently collide
against one another. For Marclay, silence reveals theexistence of sound via its absence. In this silent space,
the audience has to imagine sound through sight,
surrounded into a made-up symphony powered bymemories.

20 Faces2020

In 2020, as the world struggled through the coronavirus
pandemic, Marclay worked in isolation, continuing to
produce small collages made from cut and torn
fragments from comic books. Although he has long
explored screaming faces as a motif that merges soundand image, here the faces are constructed by the
dissonance of the various onomatopoeia, or noise itself.
“Voice” is not only a concrete sound, but also a metaphor
for human will and emotion. The global pandemic served
as an opportunity to visualize the anxiety and frustration
rampant within the world, as reflected through social
movements such as Black Lives Matter or the fightagainst climate change. Marclay's collages evoke
catharsis and empathy for the many voices and emotions
that have been hidden away behind masks.

21 No!
2020

No! is a portfolio of 15 prints made from collages using
comic book fragments, and conceived as a graphic score
for a solo voice. Unlike Manga Scroll, which is acomposition consisting of onomatopoeias disconnectedfrom their generative actions, this work shows more of
the context in which these fragments were sampled
from, thus prompting the performers to present a
rendition of the emotional states and body movements
illustrated. The resulting work superimposes many
meanings, including political and social circumstances,
onto the primal human expression of resistance, “no!”,while enabling us to experience shared emotions, thefundamental function of music.

22 Mixed Reviews (Japanese)
2021

When Helen Keller met with prominent opera singer
Enrico Caruso, she placed her fingers upon his lips andthroat in order to experience his performance. Ever since
producing the work Keller and Caruso (2000), whichdocuments this encounter, Marclay has continued tomaintain an interest in the expression of sound by those
who are deaf and hard of hearing. Mixed Reviews(Japanese) is a silent video of a deaf performer using sign
language and body language to translate Mixed Reviews(1999-2021), the collaged string of text describing musicthat is presented at the beginning of the exhibition.
Marclay states, “There's a tremendous loss between theoriginal music and these silent gestures, but you still get
a sense that it's music.” Here, the impossibility oftranslation becomes the key to opening another avenue
for shared experience. This exhibition, so full of music,
even if you cannot hear it, begins and ends with two
different versions of the same work.

Christian Marclay Translating Exhibition Guide November 20th, 2021 - February 23rd, 2022 Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

13 Chorus II

14

15

9

16

8
3
10

7
5

11

13

18

17

10

12

6

20
4
21

19

22
3

1

1 Project for the Recycling Plant
2005

2 Mixed Reviews
1999-

3 Fast Music2

9 Imaginary Records
1988 - 1997

10 Photograms
2004

11 Shuffle

1982

2007

Record Players

To Be Continued

1984

2016

4 Record Without a Cover1985

5 Recycled Records
1979 - 1986

6 Abstract Music
1989 - 1990

7 Manga Scroll
2010

8 Video Quartet
2002

17 Graffiti Composition
2002

Investigations
2018

18 Screen Play2005

19 Surround Sounds
2014 - 2015

12 Body Mix

20 Faces1991 - 1992

2020

13 Chorus II
1988

14 Actions
2013 - 201415 Screams
2018 - 201916 Ephemera: A Musical Score
2009

21 No!
2020

22 Mixed Reviews (Japanese)2021

15 Screams

1988

2018 - 2019

Since the late 1980s, Marclay has used foundphotographs with ties to sound. Chorus II consists of aseries of black and white close-ups of open mouths,
made by rephotographing images found in magazinesand placing them in old antique frames. The cropping
introduces ambiguity, disguising the original emotions
and states of the people involved. Marclay arranges theframes in an oval formation, as if to give shape to a muchlarger mouth. According to this composition, the array ofmouths comes to look like a choir, an ensemble brought
together by the artist. “Inaudible music” is one of themain themes that Marclay has explored throughout his
career. While the voices of the chorus cannot be heard,
we can each imagine what they sound like and the natureof the sounds by comparing the images with memories ofour own bodies. Marclay allows photographs, static
documents that capture a single moment of the past, tocome alive in the present as they create different sounds
for every viewer.

Faces in the act of vocalization, which suggest sounds
but cannot be heard, are an important motif for Marclay.
To create the woodcut prints series Screams, Marclay cut
out fragments of screaming faces found in Japanesemanga and other comic books and collaged them into
newly restructured faces. The small collages were
scanned and enlarged, then carved into large plywood
sheets. Lastly, these woodblocks were printed using an
etching press. In this series, Marclay references Edvard
Munch’s The Scream. He replaces the sound waves
conveyed by Munch’s array of swirling lines surrounding
the figure with the unique texture of the plywood
woodgrain. The technique of expressing invisible energy
through the use of lines is often seen in Japanese manga,and Marclay’s translation/conversion of manga into art isreminiscent of the significant influence of Ukiyo-e,Japanese ink wash painting, on Munch’s work. Theselarge images in which multiple reference points coalesce
stimulate viewers’ memories, thoughts, and feelings.

14 Actions

16 Ephemera: A Musical Score

2013 - 2014

2009

Actions is a series of work that visualizes the numerous
translations, conversions, and changes that take place
during the process of artistic production. Marclay
samples movements in art history that revolve aroundengaging with the canvas, bringing together elements ofaction painting, which sheds a light on the physicalmotion involved with the act of painting, and pop art,
which uses its silkscreen technique to print comics
without actually drawing. Marclay performed a “score”
that represents the dripping and splashing found in
manga onomatopoeia by dropping paint onto a panel laidout on the floor from high above, and throwing paintagainst a canvas propped up on the wall. After hecompleted this self-described “performance that only hehimself can listen to,” he used silkscreen to overlay the
results of his endeavors with the original onomatopoetic
collages on which they were based. In the process of thistranslation, which turns cause and effect on its head byshifting back and forth between visual and sonic
impetus, liquid objects turn solid, wet ones become dry.
Marclay attempts to facilitate a crossing point between apainting with an essence that belongs exclusively to thepast, and sounds that exist only in the present.

Fragments of Marclay’s eclectic collection of newspaper
advertisements, magazine illustrations, restaurant
menus, candy wrappers, and other disposable printed
matter decorated with musical notations were
photographed and reproduced as twenty-eight unboundprints. These images constitute a score that can beorganized and interpreted using one or more
instruments. Marclay sheds a fleeting light on theseephemeral objects—not meant to be retained orpreserved, but used for only a short time. These shortlived images remind us of how, before recording
equipment existed, music captured the hearts of so many
precisely because of the way it vanishes the moment of
its birth.

17 Graffiti Composition
2002

Investigations
2018

At the 1996 Sonambiente sound art festival in Berlin,
Marclay plastered 5,000 blank posters of sheet music
throughout the city. Passerby freely added in musicalnotes, drawings, words, and all sorts of graffiti. Somepeople wrote on top of previous inscriptions. After sometime, Marclay returned to photograph these posters. He
selected 150 photographs to turn into a score. Musicians
are free to select any number of them for use inperformances or as inspiration for writing their own
music.
First performed in 2018 at the Huddersfield Music
Festival, Investigations is a graphic score meant to beinterpreted by a large ensemble of pianists. It premieredwith 20 pianos. Marclay made the score from a collectionof found and cropped images of pianists. The performers
are asked to decipher each image, and reconstruct thesound seen in each image, writing the notes on theprovided staves, and also reenacting the body gestures.

18 Screen Play2005

Screen Play is a silent video montage compiled from oldfilm footage on which Marclay overlaid simple, colorful
digital animations of lines and dots, reminiscent of thestaffs and notes of a musical score. The work functions
as a graphic score to be interpreted by musicians, where
the abstract animations provide visual instructions
regarding the rhythm and duration. While the majority of
Marclay’s graphic scores are not shown to the audienceduring the performance and are musical notations meant
only for the performer, Screen Play is projected for all tosee.

19 Surround Sounds
2014 - 2015

Surround Sounds is an immersive, silent video installationthat uses onomatopoeia from comics. Marclay animatesthe maelstrom of words scanned from comic books in a
way that suggests their acoustic properties, providing
viewers with an experience for the imagination. “SLAM”
dashes against the wall, “POP” bursts like a bubble, and“BEEP” blinks persistently, while “KLINK” gently collide
against one another. For Marclay, silence reveals theexistence of sound via its absence. In this silent space,
the audience has to imagine sound through sight,
surrounded into a made-up symphony powered bymemories.

20 Faces2020

In 2020, as the world struggled through the coronavirus
pandemic, Marclay worked in isolation, continuing to
produce small collages made from cut and torn
fragments from comic books. Although he has long
explored screaming faces as a motif that merges soundand image, here the faces are constructed by the
dissonance of the various onomatopoeia, or noise itself.
“Voice” is not only a concrete sound, but also a metaphor
for human will and emotion. The global pandemic served
as an opportunity to visualize the anxiety and frustration
rampant within the world, as reflected through social
movements such as Black Lives Matter or the fightagainst climate change. Marclay's collages evoke
catharsis and empathy for the many voices and emotions
that have been hidden away behind masks.

21 No!
2020

No! is a portfolio of 15 prints made from collages using
comic book fragments, and conceived as a graphic score
for a solo voice. Unlike Manga Scroll, which is acomposition consisting of onomatopoeias disconnectedfrom their generative actions, this work shows more of
the context in which these fragments were sampled
from, thus prompting the performers to present a
rendition of the emotional states and body movements
illustrated. The resulting work superimposes many
meanings, including political and social circumstances,
onto the primal human expression of resistance, “no!”,while enabling us to experience shared emotions, thefundamental function of music.

22 Mixed Reviews (Japanese)
2021

When Helen Keller met with prominent opera singer
Enrico Caruso, she placed her fingers upon his lips andthroat in order to experience his performance. Ever since
producing the work Keller and Caruso (2000), whichdocuments this encounter, Marclay has continued tomaintain an interest in the expression of sound by those
who are deaf and hard of hearing. Mixed Reviews(Japanese) is a silent video of a deaf performer using sign
language and body language to translate Mixed Reviews(1999-2021), the collaged string of text describing musicthat is presented at the beginning of the exhibition.
Marclay states, “There's a tremendous loss between theoriginal music and these silent gestures, but you still get
a sense that it's music.” Here, the impossibility oftranslation becomes the key to opening another avenue
for shared experience. This exhibition, so full of music,
even if you cannot hear it, begins and ends with two
different versions of the same work.

Christian Marclay Translating Exhibition Guide November 20th, 2021 - February 23rd, 2022 Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

13 Chorus II

14

15

9

16

8
3
10

7
5

11

13

18

17

10

12

6

20
4
21

19

22
3

1

1 Project for the Recycling Plant
2005

2 Mixed Reviews
1999-

3 Fast Music2

9 Imaginary Records
1988 - 1997

10 Photograms
2004

11 Shuffle

1982

2007

Record Players

To Be Continued

1984

2016

4 Record Without a Cover1985

5 Recycled Records
1979 - 1986

6 Abstract Music
1989 - 1990

7 Manga Scroll
2010

8 Video Quartet
2002

17 Graffiti Composition
2002

Investigations
2018

18 Screen Play2005

19 Surround Sounds
2014 - 2015

12 Body Mix

20 Faces1991 - 1992

2020

13 Chorus II
1988

14 Actions
2013 - 201415 Screams
2018 - 201916 Ephemera: A Musical Score
2009

21 No!
2020

22 Mixed Reviews (Japanese)2021