10/12
2009
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“Burning Piano” and Fluxus
This is a performance of renowned avant-garde composer Annea Lockwood’s “Piano Burning,” which was first performed in 1968. Lockwood’s work is generally fascinating and pushes music —as an artistic element— in fresh directions. Imagine dancers incorporating a foam ball made with six speakers and a radio receiver into their work, or four didgeridoos accompanying images of a cave, or a piano getting drowned or burned…
“There’s something very symbolic about a piano,” notes Nicola Melville, Pianist and Professor of Music. “It’s not just a musical instrument. We all have this sort of universal respect for pianos—and seeing one on fire can be quite difficult to watch, yet quite mesmerizing at the same time. It’s both beautiful and disturbing.” (excerpt from the Spring 2009 The Carletonian)
Lockwood’s performance art was influenced by Fluxus, a group of anti-commercial, anti-art, DIY-positive, multimedia artists and composers brought together in the early 1960’s by George Maciunas. Maciunas (ma-chew-nas), a Lithuanian artist, organized Fluxus to explore concepts put forward in the experimental music of John Cage, and he became known for arranging avant-garde “happenings.”
One of the most notorious events performed at Wiesbaden was Maciunas’ interpretation of Philip Corner’s Piano Activities, the score of which asked a group of people to ‘play’, ‘scratch or rub’ and ‘strike soundboard, pins, lid or drag various objects across them.’ In Maciunas’ interpretation, with the help of Higgins, Williams and others, the piano was completely destroyed. This event was considered scandalous enough to appear on German television four times. The festival then travelled to Cologne, Paris, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, The Hague and Nice. These concerts and events were to become integral to the legacy of Fluxus. (excerpt from Wikipedia)
The group attracted artists as diverse as Yoko Ono and George Brecht, who produced what Maciunas described as an example of “the best Fluxus ‘Composition.’”. While Maciunas was living, all fluxus work was unsigned and unnumbered, and many were not attributed to their creators. Posthumously, amazing artworks such as USA Surpasses all the Genocide Records! have been attributed to him.
He was also instrumental (ha!) in turning New York City’s SOHO neighborhood into an artistic sanctuary— in 1966, he began directing his private and government funding into buying up loft buildings and converting them into studios and affordable living spaces for artists. Way to go, guy!
And let’s add a little guilty pleasure bonus— why not! (Okay, not art (?), but… YEAH!)
