For the past five decades, Stephen Prina has developed an irreverent approach to installations, films, and musical performances. An artist, musician, and composer, he draws on—and often wryly combines—diverse sources including pop songs, modernist design, art history, and his own artworks. Prina remixes these preexisting cultural materials, historical subjects, and institutional systems to unravel established meanings and generate new associations.
At the top of each hour, Prina’s The Top Thirteen Singles from Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart for the Week Ending September 11, 1993 (1993) chimes a musical motif derived from one of the top 13 Billboard hits from the week of the work’s debut in September 1993. To convert the original songs to clock chimes, Prina transcribed their motifs using traditional musical notation; they were then performed and recorded on a carillon, a set of bells controlled by a keyboard. Described by the artist as a “monument to the ephemeral,” Prina’s clock celebrates music’s ability to mark the sensibilities of an era, while calling attention to the ever-changing systems that measure popular taste.
Organized by Stuart Comer, The Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance, with May Makki, former Curatorial Assistant, Sibia Sarangan, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance, and Elizabeth Wickham, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.
