Piano Piece
Vandana
2017
Performance Video
39:41 Minutes
DESCRIPTION
I kept the piano piece without title and don’t want to call it Untitled or Not Titled
either, because this performance video expresses some inner state which
every mind goes through so many times in life, for which no exact word
can be found in the dictionary to describe and explain the feeling.
Calling this piece Untitled or Not Titled is also like putting it into
some category which is not the case with the idea behind this. Sometimes
there are some automatic happenings in the intangible mental space
which is a sheer experience of feelings, emotions, attitudes but it is
impossible to describe or explain them in words. As soon as the
weirdness of that extraordinarily inseparable mingled emotive state is
put into words, it gets confined, restricted and loses its real essence
and honest feel.
There are two activities juxtaposed and
are happening in real time. One has the time constraint (hair styling –
depending on when it is complete) and the other one is endless (playing
piano). The juxtaposition of two real life events creates an exceptional
state of mind for the performers including the hairstylist and hence
the extraordinary inexplicable, the in-between mental space gets
transmuted into the art performance to invite the audience to have that
preternatural experience.
Performance
I appear wearing white, with a veil of my
own hair on my face, sitting on a piano ready to play. The hairstylist
starts cutting my hair, simultaneously I start playing piano with closed
eyes. I have not learnt how to play the piano ever but I play on the
spot just like the first encounter with an object which, I already know,
has some sweet sounds in it. There is a glass door in the background
with a beautiful view of nature and has a label on the door-glass
saying, No Exit. I open my eyes twice during the performance
unconsciously and once try to play a tune from a TV advertisement (where
a girl plays piano and the keys she plays are shown in the advert)
which I loved watching in my childhood. The hairstylist completes my
hairstyle and I stop playing too in total peace.