Also this issue:

Metal Heads
Early pioneers in the art of engraving are on display at the Art Museum.
-Susan Hagen

Artsbeat

Science Friction
Bill Bryson on exploring science without putting his audience to sleep.
-Juliet Fletcher

Color Forms
-Janet Anderson

ArtQuicks

Bat Boy, the Musical
-Steve Cohen

Review: Nederlands Dans Theater II
-Janet Anderson

Gentlemen Volunteers
-Toby Zinman

May 14-20, 2003

artpicks

The Bell and the Glass

A.D. Amorosi

A sample is little more than a random snip. Combine it with other snips, jarringly juxtaposed, and the result can be more disturbing or revealing than the separate parts. Composer/sculptor/multimedia artist Christian Marclay has made the harshly ripped sample his métier since the late '70s, on records like Fuck Shit Up. With a talent for morass, he's collaborated with the likes of Thurston Moore and William Hooker. Marclay's penchant for re-contextualizing icons -- this time Philly totems the Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) -- is at the core of Marclay's latest exhibit, 'The Bell and the Glass.' As part of this multimedia extravaganza, Marclay and the Relâche Ensemble will perform a new computer-transformed score based on archival audio and text sources that imitates the pitch and cadence of Dada-dad Duchamp's voice. Marclay's four-screen video installation of sampled images (along with his use of work from the Art Museum's Duchamp collection and glass Liberty Bell commemorative knickknacks) facilitates not only a series of visual puns and political statements but reveals Marclay's passion for finding common ground among his subjects. 'Sometimes the connections are formal, sometimes conceptual, sometimes humorous,' says Marclay. 'The pairings are analogous to Duchamp's use of rhyming and punning as tools to develop ideas and find connections between unrelated things in order to create new meanings.' Marclay makes apparent the subtle connections between our beloved bell and Duchamp's glass -- the accidental cracks, a common dysfunctionality and the awe-inspiring sense of fragile freedom inherent in both. Take a look and you will never think of either the same way again.

The Bell and the Glass, May 17 through July 6; Relâche Ensemble performs Sat., May 17, and Sun., May 18, 1:30 p.m., and Wed., May 21, 7:30 p.m.; $7-$10, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and the Parkway, 215-763-8100.