THIS YEAR, MONTREAL JOINS the international circuit of a unique touring project led by one of the reigning names in audio art. Christian Marclay’s Sounds of Christmas winds up Saturday night at the Darling Foundry – a free exhibit. The performance installation brings Marclay’s trademark of re-imagined, re-inflected and re-appropriated audio that combines sound with visuals. Performing next Saturday will be Montrealers Martin Tetreault, a turntablist and visual artist; Nancy Tobin, sound artist and designer; Rafael Katigbak, electronic music critic, journalist, and producer; and Olivier Alary, a musician and composer.
The collaborative installation/event is based around Marclay’s collection of 1,200 Christmas albums that come in a mind-boggling range of styles and interpretations - albums by Julie Andrews and Lawrence Welk, traditional carols, children’s albums such as Snoopy’s Merry Christmas, rap, disco, jazz, country, traditional, and instrumentals alongside classics such as Dean Martin’s ‘A White Christmas’ and more than 30 versions of ‘The Little Drummer Boy.’
They’re neatly categorized and readily available for the public to riffle through.
“I’ve always bought Christmas albums because they’re cheap and in that sense they’re unwanted. They’re unwanted 11 months out of the year,” said Marclay.
“They’re so sentimental. What fascinates me is that there are so many of them available and it’s the same songs reinterpreted. There’s already this idea of the remix there. Some of these songs have been around so long they’re kind of part of pop culture – they’re not associated with a singular artist. They’re everybody’s songs.”
A six channel video work on one wall projects images of the album covers and clips from previous performances while local deejays mix, remix, reinterpret and experiment with sounds that have become entrenched in our Christmas ritual. Direct feed footage of the deejay as he or she plays is also projected onto the back wall.
“A lot of people are sick of hearing Christmas music so I try to do something else with it,” said Marclay. ”At least, I’m sick of hearing the same thing. But as I get older I get more tolerant. What I find interesting about Christmas music is that it’s ritual music and it’s this shopping ritual, religious ritual, whatever it is for different people. And it happens only in December. Can you think of another music that is so time specific that you can only listen to it one time of year? It’s quite unusual.”
Marclay played his own set last Saturday along with Montreal-based deejays Mitchell Akiyama, Christof Migone, and Slim Willams. “I don’t know if people are really listening, they’re socializing,” he said. “But that’s the purpose of music, to bring people together. Music is a very social thing, so it’s serving its purpose. And people might think differently about the music when tomorrow they go shopping for the holidays. They might suddenly hear it with a different type of attention.”
Sounds Like Christmas has played at the New Museum in New York and the Tate Modern in London.
Free admission. The Darling Foundry, 745 Ottawa St. 5 – 9 pm. The project is presented in conjunction with REPLAY, an exhibition of some major video and audio pieces at DHC/ART, running till March 29.
