Christian Marclay Quotations

'Record Without A Cover' was about allowing the medium to come through, making a record that was not a document of a performance but a record that could change with time, and would be different from one copy to the next.

With improvisation, I just do it. It might be a total failure but then you just throw the dice again.

These things I sample, or clip, are things that we share - music, films, sounds. It triggers a layer of participation from the audience as they recognize the material and remember it.

Art is all in the details.

Unlike sitting at a computer screen, printing is very direct and hands-on.

The process of editing is what I enjoy most - putting the pieces together and making sense out of them.

Since I was a child I have always been cutting things out and gluing them together rather than drawing them.

It's the way life is, I suppose. Whatever happens, you deal with it.

It's good to get away from the editing suite. It's very unhealthy to be sitting in front of the screen for too long.

If you make something good and interesting and not ridiculing someone or being offensive, the creators of the original material will like it.

I've never been a big cinephile, which may be why I could treat 'The Clock' like a puzzle and force the pieces to fit together in odd ways.

I have never been much of a painter.

Every person's remembering will be different. That engagement is important, I think.

As an artist, you're always somewhat obscure. We're not talking Hollywood.

When you take something apart, you get a great sense of what it took to originally put it together.

You can get so many sounds out of one record. Every record can be used in some way.

We go to the movies to forget about time, to be in a dream state. And it's entertainment, distraction, from the fact that everything is kind of crumbling in front of our eyes.

Record Without A Cover' was about allowing the medium to come through, making a record that was not a document of a performance but a record that could change with time, and would be different from one copy to the next.

People who care about records are always giving me a hard time. I mean, I would destroy records in performances, and break them, and whatever I could do to them to create a sound that was something else than just the sound that was in the groove.

If the music in a groove fits with what you're playing, then play it; if not, then you can play it backwards. If that doesn't work, you try it at a different speed. If it really doesn't work you just break it. The whole ritual to put a record on a turntable just to listen to it, I don't do that too often.

You start with an idea but then so many things can happen.

[Photography] can be tiny, on your phone, or it can be a billboard, or a film-sized projection, or printed in a magazine. I don't think we've been in a time before when so much photography is available in so many formats, when everybody is a photographer.

Photography is solitary and there are lags between seeing with your eyes and seeing through the lens, and then seeing the image on your computer.... I often see things after the fact. This revelatory quality includes a sense of playfulness, because you're not sure what the consequences are going to be.

Most of my pictures are really small statements. There's a banality to them.

It was part of a financial situation. I could only afford records in thrift stores. Then you could find wonderful things, but now everything is a collectible. I like the recycling idea --using the stuff that people don't want anymore, and make new music out of it. There was an element of looking back and listening to your parents' records and doing something with that stuff. Sort of acknowledging the past while rejecting it at the same time.

I admire the abstract expressionists and pop artists so right now I'm referencing American '60s art and at the same time referencing Japanese manga culture.

I’ve worked with collage a lot. And there’s this chance thing that happens-you don’t always control things. Why did you find this today and not this? But you’ve got this thing, and you make it work. It’s the way life is, I suppose. Whatever happens, you deal with it.