Andrea Büttner, Piano Destructions (2014/2023)

Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau
Thursday, June 15 2023
6 p.m.–7.30 p.m.
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The performance "Piano Destructions" by German artist Andrea Büttner (b. 1972) was originally realized in 2014 as a two-year collaboration between the artist, the Walter Phillips Gallery and the Banff Centre. The ongoing solo exhibition "Andrea Büttner. The Heart of Relations" at Kunstmuseum Basel is the occasion to present this performance, which has never been shown since, in a Basel context. The performance "Piano Destructions" by Andrea Büttner includes a selection of projected archive material: it shows artists such as Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Ben Vautier, Günter Uecker and others destroying pianos. In response to these scenes of piano destruction, Büttner has nine pianists play live on nine grand pianos in front of an audience in the formation of a choir or ensemble. The repertoire of pieces played live consists of Romantic works by composers such as Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856), as well as composer Fanny Hensel (1805-1847). The Romantic works will be followed by two parts from Renaissance composer Claudio Monteverdi's (1567-1643) "Marian Vespers," originally written for multiple voices. Büttner notes, Monteverdi is part of the program not least because he was "the favorite composer of one of the founders of Fluxus, George Maciunas (1931-1978)." With the two excerpts from Monteverdi's sacred works transcribed for the piano, the artist aims to make the reading of the Romantic compositions more complex: they introduce aspects such as communal action, collaboration, the doing of the collective, or polyphony in aesthetic production, and are at the same time juxtaposed with notions of individual creation and genius.