1.24.2025
Tap Room, Providence
duration 16:25 mins
I will into the broken piano without making sound.
a body
a broken piano
metronome
tape
lamp
It looks easy to tame the metronome.
It’s not as rigid and non-negotiable as I thought.
But there is still an unspeakable impulsion beneath its motion mechanism. I blind both of our eyes. It’s fair.
Using a white tape to clock the motion of the metronome, the surroundings come to silence again. There is an old and broken piano in the room. I walk towards it, putting the metronome on the place where it is supposed to be, for a piano. Now, it’s only me and the piano, and the dim light. I need to set my own rules, to continue the performance. What can I do? Facing directly with the piano for a while, an object, an emotionless, non-human, seemingly non-alive object, suddenly comes into my living memory. To build a relationship with the piano is something the metronome didn’t show me before, as this time, the choice is on me. I tap some keys, it recalls my childhood memory of practicing the piano. Some keys are already broken and cannot make a right sound anymore, only the dumb noise.
Engaging with the silence and the object, the use of a piano no longer obeys the current social circumstances, just like the metronome on the piano is taped. As I put my index finger on an unsound key and tap on it under an average rate, the rule for my own is established: two index fingers are not allowed to leave the unsound key, and should keep tapping constantly while the rest of my limbs and body are interacting with the piano beneath spontaneously. I stretch out, I curl up, once the rule is set up, I feel thrilled to challenge the limit of my body, to test what I can do with this object through an uncommon gesture. I cancel the use of the metronome, and make a new one for my own: my tapping finger and the dumb sound it makes. The finger holds on the key so tightly and faithfully while the limbs are suffering from an uncomfortable gesture.
Eventually, I remove the tape and leave the piano, metronome waving and making sound again. Now, the resistance is over. To fight against something somehow let me know more about it. So what’s next? What can I do with the metronome?