, which fed into punk and hip-hop, both of which were major influences on Marclay. So it’s disconcerting to be reminded that he is essentially Swiss: he grew up in Geneva and could barely speak English until the age of 18. He got into avant garde culture not in the lofts and galleries of SoHo, but in an ultra-strict, French-speaking Catholic boarding school.
Determined to go to art school, Marclay applied to study sculpture in Geneva because he understood that, having fewer applicants, it would be the easiest way in. Later, at the prestigious Cooper Union college in New York, he encountered the German conceptual artist. “His classes involved discussing our work in detail, so the discussion became as important as the work, which taught me there is more to art than the silent object.
Marclay began manipulating records as a kind of performed sculpture in galleries and nightclubs: physically cutting up records bought in thrift stores, splicing together the interesting parts and playing the fractured cacophonous results on turntables hanging round his neck, in gestures that smack equally of hip-hop and musique concrete. In one instance he “ate” an LP on film.