Piano Airlift (1988/2006)
1st exhibition: Kunsthalle Krems Factory, Krems, Austria, Oct. 2006
Installation for midi piano and video projection.
In 1984, I began a series of Aeolian pieces, the first one in collaboration with Thaddeus Holownia, at his farm in Jolicure, New Brunswick, Canada. In 1988 we were invited to the Sound Symposium in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where we installed the Long Aeolian Piano by airlifting a piano with a helicopter to the top of Gibbet’s Hill, overlooking St. John’s harbour. The piano served as the soundboard for long piano strings suspended down a cliff from the top of the hill. The strings resonated loudly from wind vibrations for a ten-day-long installation.
The airlifting of the piano was an art action itself, and the takedown of the piece was another art action — when we threw the piano over the cliff to smash into pieces.
In 2006 I was invited by Jo Aichinger to do a sound and video piece for the Kontraste Festival in Krems. I searched for several months to find the three different VHS videotapes of the original footage of the airlifting and smashing of the piano in St. John’s. After editing the video footage, I composed an accompanying piano piece that is synchronized with the video and played on a Yamaha Disklavier piano. The Disklavier player piano is placed in a gallery, and the video is projected on the gallery wall.
bottom photo by Toni Hafkenscheid
©Gordon Monahan 1988/2006