4TH MOSCOW BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Arthouse Squat Forum
PianoRecycle art group :
Peter Aidu, Aleksey Savitsky, Yaroslav Shvartsshtein Quiet curiosity cabinet packed with numerous pianos accidentally escaped from waste bins symbolizes some sort of silent music space. Each instrument is full of sounds that nowadays man cannot comprehend.
Deep under thick layer of digital soundscape there are remains of the bygone music era. It existed before the Flood - World War I, before sound became totally electrified and sound recording - ubiquitous and overwhelming. The purpose of our installation is an attempt hear this music without any interpretation and to comprehend its presence according to the time convergence typical of contemporary culture.
"... approximately since 1999 these pianos have been showing up like some prehistoric creatures. It seemed like they were searching for me themselves, and I have just switched on a kind of secret signal light. It resembled materialization of dreams, but what was their origin? As early as in the 1920's revolutionary composer Arseny Avraamov advised Lunacharsky to collect and burn all the pianos. However this project has never been accomplished, it was new Soviet life that instantly covered up all the traces of the Golden Age. The fate of what have remained after USSR collapsed was very similar to what has been done recently with the rest of the old quarters of Moscow. Shall I specify how it was done particularly? Each of the instruments is unique since they all were created in different periods (roughly between 1819 and 1918), cities and countries. None of them resembles each other since they all were the products of a living culture and not of the modern pianocloning..."
Peter Aidu
http://oldpiano.ru/