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LP
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BS 001LP
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$29.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/14/2025
In 1934, Swiss engineers completed the Chandoline Hydroelectric Plant, channeling Alpine water through 16 kilometers of concrete pipe. By 2023, the turbines had stopped. The plant was empty, silent -- a cathedral to obsolete energy with perfect acoustics and nothing left to say. Christian Marclay saw an instrument. For the inaugural Biennale Son in 2023, the artist who made his name destroying vinyl in 1980s New York turned the entire hydroelectric system into a playable object. The concept: open a manhole 4.5 kilometers uphill, drop something in, wait for sound to travel through the mountain. Steel bearings didn't work -- too heavy, wrong frequency. So Marclay used golf and tennis balls donated by local clubs. The Valais School of Art rigged the turbine hall with microphones. Then the balls dropped. Seconds of silence. Then: tumbling, bouncing, accelerating through kilometers of concrete. Not one ball but many, building into something between avalanche and applause as they hit the hall below. Marclay directed remotely, releasing volleys like a percussionist striking a drum the size of a small town. The pipe amplified everything -- pure mountain reverb, no processing, just 1934 engineering singing its swan song. The recording, mixed with Alain Renaud, is the Biennale Son's first vinyl release. Side A features fifteen minutes of cascading spheres, industrial archaeology as living sound. Side B features an engraved portrait of Marclay. Unplayable. The performance happened once. The pipe spoke. That's enough. This is quintessential Marclay -- the artist who built the Phonoguitar (1983), scattered records to be crushed underfoot (Footsteps, 1989), won Venice's Golden Lion with The Clock (2011), collaborated with Sonic Youth and John Zorn, and has spent his career proving that everything is already an instrument. Mountains. Vinyl. Film. Time itself. You just need to know where to listen -- or where to drop the ball. Always the same question: what music do objects make when you know how to listen? Here, the answer is gravity plus concrete plus expired sporting goods equals something you've never heard before. Conduite forcée means "penstock" but translates as "forced conduct" -- water compelled through pipe, sound through space, music from infrastructure. Limited edition. One pressing. No digital. Just the grooves and the ghost of Switzerland's hydroelectric past, pressed into vinyl like water in a sealed pipe. Mountains as instruments. Golf balls as notes. A decommissioned power plant's final performance, conducted by one of contemporary art's most inventive listeners.
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Book
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9783037645970
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"Blending Fluxus, pop and performance art, Marclay has tested and reinvented the relationship between art and sound over the past four decade. Published on the occasion of Christian Marclay's major survey at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this volume explores in depth his popular and influential multimedia art. From his early performances in the 1970s to his iconic Guitar Drag (2000) and large-scale video installations such as All Together (2018), Marclay has ranged freely across mediums -- photography, modified musical instruments, videos, prints and paintings, objects and graphic scores -- exploring auditory existence through strategies of sampling, shuffling and montage. Designed by Zak Group and extensively illustrated, the publication gathers together new essays by writers Polly Barton and Nathalie Quintane, art historians Michel Gauthier and Marcella Lista, and design specialist Catherine de Smet. It also features a conversation with Marclay by the exhibition's curator, Jean-Pierre Criqui, an anthology of texts from an international array of writers and art historians -- Clément Chéroux, Dennis Cooper, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Wayne Koestenbaum and David Toop -- and a comprehensive chronology by Annalisa Rimmaudo. London- and New York-based visual artist and composer Christian Marclay (born 1955) was born in California, raised in Geneva, Switzerland, and studied sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 54th Venice Biennale for his video The Clock and has had solo shows at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC (1990); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2001); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); and the Whitney Museum, New York (2010)." Contributor(s): Christian Marclay (artist) , Jean-Pierre Criqui (editor) , Laurent Le Bon (foreword by) , Xavier Rey (foreword by) , Polly Barton (text by - art/photo books), Dennis Cooper (text by - art/photo books), Catherine De Smet (text by - art/photo books), Michel Gauthier (text by - art/photo books), Marcella Lista (text by - art/photo books), Nathalie Quintane (text by - art/photo books), Clément Theroux (text by - art/photo books), David Toop (text by - art/photo books), Wayne Koestenbaum (text by - art/photo books), Annalisa Rimmaudo (contribution by). Hardcover. 256 pages. 1.0" H x 8.8" L x 11.1" W (2.47 lbs)
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CD
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DWAB 006CD
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Dog W/A Bone, the recording label established by the Paula Cooper Gallery, is pleased to announce the CD release of Graffiti Composition by American visual artist and composer Christian Marclay. In 1996, Marclay plastered more than 5,000 posters of blank sheet music in public places throughout Berlin during a month-long sound festival. The posters functioned as an open invitation to the public to scribble musical notes, or any other type of graffiti. Marclay photographed the graffitied sheets, selected 150 from the group, and compiled them into a portfolio intended to be interpreted and performed by musicians. Graffiti Composition is the live recording of a one-time performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2006. Led by Elliott Sharp, it features five world-renowned guitar players: Melvin Gibbs, Mary Halvorson, Lee Ranaldo, Vernon Reid, and Elliot Sharp. The release of Graffiti Composition coincides with the opening of Christian Marclay: Festival at the Whitney Museum of Art, a groundbreaking exhibition highlighting the interplay between the visible, audible and performance that is the hallmark of Marclay's work. The show will focus on the artist's graphic scores: art works with visual cues to be interpreted by musicians in performance. The exhibition will feature select musicians' daily live performances of Marclay's scores and runs from July 1st through September 26th, 2010.
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CD
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RER CM1
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"Since 1979 Christian Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records. His interest in records, both as objects and bearers of sound, is expressed through sculpture, performance, video and music. In performance, he mixes a wide variety of records on up to 8 turntables, fragmenting, repeating, altering speeds, playing the records backwards, etc. More Encores was originally released as a 10" vinyl record on No Man's Land (Germany) in 1988, composed entirely of records after whom each track is titled. "John Cage" is a recording of a collage made by cutting slices from several records and gluing them back together into a single disc. In all other places the records were mixed and manipulated on multiple turntables and recorded analog with the use of overdubbing. A hand-crank gramophone was used in "Louis Armstrong". More Encores is a classic slice of primal Plunderphonia, the natural companion to John Oswald's suppressed Plunderphonics masterpiece, featuring a series of viciously beautiful vinyl collages from this important and influential sound sculptor and turntable terrorist." Other tracks are based on the music of Johann Strauss, John Zorn, Martin Denny, Frederic Chopin, Fred Frith, Arthur Ferrante & Louis Teicher, Maria Callas, Jimi Hendrix, Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg & Christian Marclay.
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