Sound performance, 13′

Twenty stones on the piano keyboard densely press down almost all the keys, all notes from the lowest la to the highest do. The gaps between the keys no longer let fingers enter, maybe only a feather could fit, but it wouldn’t have enough weight to press on them, the sound would be very quiet and would no longer resemble the sound of a piano, only a soft scratching. The sound withdraws from the audible sound. There is no piano in the mind, only thoughts about it. A Kuban-Krasnodar, loaded with a historical charge. Rust, a small glass bottle on the right side of the strings, tied with a golden rope, with dried tobacco on the bottom, and moth-eaten wool. A golden rope would sound worse than rusty strings, while across the street a fir tree is drowning in a million lights. A colleague told me of a dream about how gently the stones were pulling them down deep to the bottom. Only dry tobacco left to smoke because all the rest is already gone. The weight presses down and shapes my work, each chord struck by a stone is accompanied by an extended recorded sound of a chord struck by a stone in the same register; these sounds pile on top of each other, forming a wall of sound. You can plug your ears, but the wall remains, and what about the sounds in the gaps between the stones, where moth dust doesn’t fit (?) I brought the stones from a man who is building a house without windows, and I can’t tell you more, because it is another person’s autobiographical work that has not been created yet.

Exhibited at Drifts gallery, Vilnius
Proto credits: Dainora Rudėnaitė