The sound artist Christian Marclay, the creator of such landmark works as “Video Quartet” and “Guitar Drag,” doesn’t listen to much music. He’s a big Marcel Duchamp fan — not a big surprise for one of the most prominent utilizers of “readymades,” like found records and record covers. He’s not a philosopher. He thinks nostalgia isn’t a bad word. He ignores copyright issues — this from the man who ran the video of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup against the audio of Brian De Palma’s Blow Out. His mother was a collector of Christmas music. He thinks it’s too early to employ an iPod in his art.
We know this, and much more, thanks to a lengthy and highly informative interview recently distributed as part of a podcast series of the British museum conglomerate, the Tate (MP3). Interviewed by art historian Gilda Williams, Marclay talks in detail about numerous of his individual works, and takes half an hour of questions from the audience, most of whom are surprised (as am I — as probably would be most people familiar with his work) about his stated relative distance from music.