Marcel Duchamp - Esquivons Les Ecchymoses Esquimeaux Aux Mots Exquis

Part of a folio of artist multiples, Marcel Duchamp's piece works on at least two levels. One side of this disc features a short word game printed on black paper which covers the area of any grooves. The text "esquivons les ecchymoses esquimeaux aux mots exquis" plays on the similarity of the sound of words with quite different meaning and is one of the many circular texts seen rotating on similar discs in Duchamp's film "Anemic Cinema". The whole series of text is read by Duchamp on the opposite side of the disc in a 7 minute recording. While almost all are in French, Duchamp does include a single example in English: "my niece is cold because my knees are cold" which helps convey the sense of word play inherent in these pieces, and in fact in much of Duchamp's work. The reading and circular representation of one of the texts display the circular aspects of these pieces which draw their sly humor from internal references within each stanza. While published in 1968, the recording sounds much older due to its thin quality, and may in fact have necessarily drawn from an archival source as Duchamp passed away that year. Adding to this, the record is haunted by a large amount of surface noise as the playing side was mounted directly to the folder cover enclosing SMS No. 2 leaving the surface exposed to more abuse. The combination of the fidelity and surface noise leaves the record sounding like an older 78 shellac disc even after extensively cleaning. Nonetheless, it is still an important document given the scant number of recordings of Duchamp's calm speaking voice.