Book Launch: 'Christian Marclay, Telephones'

Please join us for a screening, conversation and book signing with Christian Marclay and Wayne Koestenbaum, to celebrate the publication of Christian Marclay: Telephones. The event will take place at our 534 West 21st Street location on September 14th. The conversation will begin at 6 PM. 

Published almost 30 years since the making of Christian Marclay’s seven-minute-long montage Telephones (1995), a precursor to his following video collages, such as Video Quartet (2002), The Clock (2010), Subtitled (2019) and Doors (2022), this book is an adaptation that brings together stills of the visual track, a transcription of the soundtrack and a conversation between Christian Marclay and Yuval Etgar during the 2020 lockdown—befittingly, over the phone.

Signed copies will be for sale.

Christian Marclay's current exhibition, Subtitled, will remain on view during the event.

Christian Marclay (b. 1955, San Rafael, California) has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including one-person presentations at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. (1990); the Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva (1995); the Kunsthaus, Zurich (1997); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2001); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain, Geneva (2008); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2010); Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2011); the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2019) and the Centre Pompidou (2022–2023). A pioneering DJ using records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collages, since 1979 Marclay has performed and recorded both solo and in collaboration with many musicians, including John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Otomo Yoshihide, Butch Morris, Shelley Hirsch, Okkyung Lee, Mats Gustafsson, and Lee Ranaldo. His work is in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; the Tate Modern, London; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Marclay lives and works in London.

Wayne Koestenbaum poet, critic, fiction-writer, artist, filmmaker, performer—has published 23 books, including Stubble Archipelago, Ultramarine, The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). He has exhibited his paintings in solo shows at White Columns, 356 Mission, and the University of Kentucky Art Museum, as well as in many group shows, including at Essex Flowers, Wege Center for the Arts, Gordon Robichaux, Klaus von Nichtssagend, Yossi Milo Gallery, FIERMAN, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. His first piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017; he has given musical performances of improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, The Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, the Renaissance Society, the Hammer Museum, The Poetry Project, and the Francis Kite Club. His first feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs (New York) in 2021. His first solo exhibition of moving-image work, July Synesthesia, took place in summer 2024 at the Millenium Film Workshop. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Whiting Award. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired his literary archive. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.