Instrumental

Instrumental  is a work that explores piano as a performative mechanism to renegotiate situations, subjects and environments. Relocating an upright piano to Culpra Station, Instrumental explores the colonial implications of the piano within the context of an indigenous led mapping workshop.

A piano local piano tuner from Mildura was commissioned to travel to Culpra Station and asked to tune the Piano to the best of his abilities. For a duration of thirty minutes, the tuner grappled with the instrument that had not been played in over 50 years.  Suffering from a cracked timber frame, the act of tuning and tightening strings only put additional pressure on the internal mechanisms sliding in and out of tune as the tuner moved from through the keys from one end to the other. 

The research investigates the proposition that performative strategies are spatially activated and co-produced through a relational field of spectatorship, action and spatial context.

Instrumental was produced in Collaboration with the Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation