New York-based artist Christian Marclay crosses many genres; musical, artistic and performative. His exhibition, Replay Marclay – Videos that mix avant garde edge with pop culture cool is the first solo exhibition to be at ACMI, and offers the viewer an excellent foray into his oeuvre, from the early 1970s, through to more recent collaborations with DJs and musicians including Sonic Youth, the Kronos Quartet and John Zorn.

Taking up the entire downstairs screen gallery, the exhibitions lets you wander through footage of Marclay performing his often-bizarre musical arrangements. These include Guitar Drag, in which an electronic guitar is attached by a rope to the back of a ute and dragged along a rocky road; or Record Breakers, in which a group of people smash records. There are also his more recent video pieces, which have been shown at the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim.

What all the works share is the desire to make unpredictable sounds, and in the process, create something surprising and challenging.

For Marclay, music is material. The accidental sounds he makes from scratching and cutting up records and playing them in unconventional ways becomes the art object. Through video, he is able to capture the moment the sound is made. This overlapping of the aural and the visual is fascinating.

Such investigations into music, sound and image have their basis in the performance work of artists such as John Cage, Laurie Anderson and the Fluxus group of the 60s.

One particular piece is especially fascinating, and demonstrates just how groundbreaking Marclay has been. Ghost (I Don’t Live Today) 1985 shows Marclay with his invention, the Phonoguitar. Not being able to play an instrument himself, Marclay created the Phonoguitar to parody rock stars. In the process he became perhaps the first turntable artist. Long before hip hop, Marclay was performing as a ‘turntablist’ and experimental DJ.

Later video pieces by Marclay include Crossfire, in which gunshots from films such as Pulp Fiction, Scarface and Terminator come together to create a confronting musical arrangement which corners the viewer. Another work of interest is Mixed Reviews (American Sign Language) which depicts a deaf actor using sign language to interpret excerpts from musical reviews.

Replay Marclay is a funny, fascinating and challenging exhibition that will hopefully attract new audiences to ACMI.

www.acmi.net.au

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