- softening the silent, softening the sedimented
In this section you can explore the process of softening that took place during the course of the project starting with the softening of the grand piano.
As the project went along and the grand piano was softened in different ways, I went on softening other instruments, and in the end, I tried to soften up the alto saxophone as well, in an effort of possible reconciliation.
Throughout the project, the notion of softening is used as a vessel or a methodological prism on different levels. Partly as a) softening being the (reverse) concrete process of making (harder) physical materials softer, b) softening of sedimented discursive matters within the instruments and its surroundings, and c) softening of harder methodologies, by importing approaches and methods that you would find in some areas of scientific research (such as concepts of mapping, "neutrality", format and styles of academic referencing, and sterile research environments) and circuit bending these methods and concepts by deploying them within other contexts, oversaturating them with themselves (and making them wobbly or even collapse under their own oversaturated weight).
Point of departure.
The grand piano is an instrument heavily imbedded within Western institutions of music and has historically been considered a cultural marker of “an educated home.”
The grand piano is equally embedded within a tradition of renegotiating the instrument in various ways: ways that lead into different musical spheres as well as spheres of both performance and visual art. These range from Charles Ives’ quartertone piano duets and John Cages’ prepared piano and piano walks (with Yoko Ono) to the (Fluxus) tradition of destroying or altering pianos by artists such as Yam Jun Paik, Phill Corner, and Annea Lockwood.
In a more modern context, we find Rebecca Horn and Andrea Büttner entering into dialogues with both the instrument and the history of how the grand piano has been renegotiated before.
The history of different ways of renegotiating the piano and the history of how the piano has been renegotiated through time is a long one, and for more examples go to ς.
This project situates itself within this long tradition of piano renegotiation mentioned above, with the hope that it can contribute to this tradition by offering the notion of softening as a possible strategy .
When entering a room with a grand piano I experience that even though nobody is playing it, the room is still saturated with the instrument just being there in its sonic silence.
The silence of the piano seems to pour itself right out into the room, filling it and oversaturating it.
It is sticky.
The grand silence speaks volumes in its stickiness.
Softening the grand piano—softening the big silent
Toast (softening No. 1) took place in September 2021 and was a prestudy for the project. Softening No. 1 offers a strategy for how the piano can be approached from a safe(r) distance. The piano is approached by a group of four piano players or piano whisperers. Sudden movements are avoided since any rapid movement will make the potential gaps in the grand piano close in and petrify.
When the ensemble of four has reached the grand piano, the instrument is padded with the bodies of the ensemble and later with bodies of toasted white bread.
(Stale, expired, and discarded bread was used as far as possible)
Softening No. 4 took place in the form of a public dissection. Everybody who was interested in taking part in the process of disassembling a grand piano could participate in softening No. 4, and thereby explore the potential of splitting something apart as a creative force, creating something different together—something with another orientation.
In the end, the grand piano was separated, and all the parts were placed on the floor like the giblets of a frog under a microscope.
The disassembling process was, in this version, led by piano expert Vilhelm Rasmussen (from Vilhelm’s Musikværksted), and took place on February 2023.
Softening No. 5 is an act of disorientation.
With strings taped to the fingers of the human-players and the fingers of the grand piano, the grand piano is affected by an ensemble of human-players from a safer distance.
The entanglement of the strings secures the disorientation needed to avoid infection and/or being possessed by toxoplasmatic ectoplasm.
The human player piano is folding back on Nancarrow’s player piano pieces.
- Study - March 9th, 2023 (I)
In 1903, Niels Ryberg Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine “in recognition of his contribution to the treatment of diseases, especially lupus vulgaris, with concentrated light radiation, whereby he has opened a new avenue for medical science.”
Om Lysets Indvirkninger paa Huden (On the effects of light on the skin) was published in 1893 by Finsen as part of this work.
In softening No. 6, the grand piano body underwent light therapy as a method of eliminating cancerous pathogens as well as dissolving ectoplasms through exposure to a bright light.
Softening No. 6 took place in March 2023.
The tissue parts of the dissected grand piano are put into jars, thereby rendering its ab/(para)normalities.
Softening No. 7 relates to some previous work of mine in which I investigate how membranes can be used as a method of separating bodies from other bodies (such as in the Instruments series).
To the right: 88 piano parasites extracted from the grand piano (parasites A0–C8).
In the fall of 2023 and the spring of 2024, I revisited the fife in an attempt to soften it by means of oversaturation. Hence, I composed a work for seven flutes in which the flute is approached as a softer site, asking the question of how little air is needed to play the flute? How soft can you play the instrument?
Blødgørelser (Danish for softenings) took place in June 2024.
Listen to an excerpt here below (for seven piccolo flutes).
