Summary: with Melvin Gibbs, Mary Halvorson, Lee Ranaldo, Vernon Reid, and Elliott Sharp Musical director: Elliott Sharp September 13, 2006 6:30 p.m. The Museum of Modern Art presents Christian Marclay: Graffiti Composition, a performance of Christian Marclay's musical score Graffiti Composition. In 1996 the artist plastered more than 5,000 blank musical notation sheets in public places throughout Berlin during a month-long sound festival, thus randomly enabling the public to fill them freely with musical notations, scribblings, or anything else. Marclay photographed the graffitied sheets, selected 150 from the group, and compiled them into a portfolio that is meant to be used by musicians to perform. Graffiti Composition has been interpreted by a variety of musical ensembles in the last few years, including at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 2001, the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans in 2002, and the Barbican Centre, London, in 2005. For this one-time performance, composer/producer/sound artist Elliott Sharp leads a musical ensemble comprising five renowned guitar players-Melvin Gibbs, Mary Halvorson, Lee Ranaldo, Vernon Reid, and Sharp-who will interpret the musical score. The performance is offered in conjunction with the exhibition Out of Time: A Contemporary View.
