Christian Marclay Quotes

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

- Christian Marclay

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.

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay

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.

- Christian Marclay

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.

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay

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.

- Christian Marclay

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.

- Christian Marclay

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.

- Christian Marclay

'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.

- Christian Marclay

Art is all in the details.

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay

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.

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay

I have never been much of a painter.

- Christian Marclay

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

- Christian Marclay