A single note is replaced from Bruce Nauman's 1969 video piece Violin Tuned D.E.A.D., a work in which the artist, standing alone in his studio in front of a camera, repeatedly plays the open strings of a retuned violin for nearly an hour. In my work, Nauman’s studio-based musical death pronouncement is reframed as both a public performance and a video installation. The artist’s musical half-joke/meta-statement is retuned again, recast as a meditation on the actional component of the concert situation and its mediation, inviting a consideration of the issues of property, ownership, and labor currently relevant to music and its institutions. extended text:PDF
Performed by Tom Chiu (excerpt).
First presented as part of Non-cochlear Sound, Diapason Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Oct. 1, 2010