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Art & Books

Visual Vexations

MARTIN ARNOLD and MICAH LEXIER Erik Satie’s Vexations. Brookfield Place, Allen Lambert Galleria (181 Bay).


Erik Satie, eccentric crank of the French impressionist composers, was known for giving decidedly strange instructions to the players of his enigmatic piano compositions. One piece, entitled Vexations, contained the instruction, “In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.”

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It took another prankster, John Cage, to take Satie at his word. He staged a performance at the Pocket Theatre in Manhattan in 1963, enlisting a relay team of pianists that included, among others, John Cale of the Velvet Underground.

The performance lasted 18 hours.

Now Cristof Migone, the curator of Zone C (downtown South) and a music historian in his own right, stages the performance on two pianos under the lofty arches of the Allen Lambert Galleria. Renowned composer Martin Arnold has assembled a new team of pianists, while artist Micah Lexier has designed a process that transforms all 840 copies of the score into small sculptural objects.

Though the piece has been given more than a few marathon performances since Satie composed it in 1893, this is probably the first with a marked visual component.

“Cristof knew of my interest in counting and the whole process of making statistics visible” Lexier explained over the phone. “So he called and told me he was interested in bringing this project together for Nuit Blanche. I liked the idea of performing a piece of music 840 times and the challenge of attempting to make that process visible.”

Martin Arnold (left) and Micah Lexier

Two pianists play the piece simultaneously on two pianos, discarding a copy of the score as it is played. The sheets of music, printed on die-cut scored paper designed by Cybele Young, are then taken by two paper carriers to a table at the other end of the space. There they will be folded by two volunteers into neat stackable objects and placed in a 10-by-84 grid. This will give Nuit Blanchers a chance to keep precise visual track of the number of performances as it progresses.

Lexier is particularly pleased by the strange mathematical resonances he found in the project. “The space is really magical in relation to this piece. The number 840 recurred at least three times when we were counting different elements of the building’s architecture and trying to conceptualize a process.

“So I think there’s a real psychic resonance between this space and the piece itself.”

Despite all the playing, folding and stacking involved, viewers can expect an experience that borders on the meditative. Satie’s composition, at once solemn and forlorn, floats through acoustic space like a winding tendril of smoke.

Lexier is also excited about the unknowns that could affect what is essentially an unprecedented feat.

“It’s very exciting because we’re facing a lot of unknowns in undertaking this process” he adds. ” Will the objects stack up properly? Will the folders all fold in precisely the same way? How will the two compositions overlap in this space? We are truly inventing something here.”

art@nowtoronto.com

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