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PIANO AKTIVITYS AS A DISCIPLIND DESTRUKTSHUN (A PIANO WORK’T) is a documentary film created by Wes Kline, Sean Miller and Chad Serhal, exploring two inter-related compositions by Fluxus artist and composer Philip Corner. The two scores; 'Piano Activities' (1962) and 'PIano Aktivitys as a Disciplind Destrukshun (a piano work't)' (2022) were written almost 60 years apart. The film switches between interview with Corner about both versions and documentation of a live performance of 'Piano Aktivitys...'

'Piano Activities' was first performed as part of the inaugural Fluxus: Internacionale Festspiele Neuester Musik in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1962. It involved some of Fluxus' leading originators including Nam June Paik, George Maciunas and Alison Knowles, when they developed a radical new interpretation of Corner's score by employing saws, hammers, chisels, pliers and rasps - reducing the piano to bits and pieces.

'Piano Aktivitys as a Disciplind Destruktshun (a piano work't)' is narrated by Corner. It documents the first ever performance of his 2022 score requiring a more "purposfull WorkingAt." Offering greater focus on impermanence and transformation over the more destructive ethos of the 1962 events. Corner advises "Everyone should be doing it!" Wishing that every piano at the end of its useable life should enjoy this style of final performance. An event that unleashes new creative possibilities and allows for new artworks to emerge from the instrument's disintegrated parts.

The film 'Piano Aktivitys as a Disciplind Destruktshun (a piano work't)' had its debut as a video installation as part of Ram Chapptar Shilip Nyas 5th International Art Exposition & Freiraum 25, Varanasi India.

The film features, in its making and performance: Philip Corner, Craig Coleman, Jade Dellinger, Bibbe Hansen, Wes Kline, Billie J Maciunas, Jack Massing, Sean Miller, Benedicta Opoku-Mensah, Kyle Selley, Chad Serhal and Dan Stepp.

This exhibition will open with a talk and performance by the artist Sean Miller and original Fluxus artist Ken Friedman with Jack Massing (The Art Guys) and Jade Dellinger (The Robert Rauschenberg Gallery). More information on this event is available at this link.

BIOGRAPHY

Wes Kline is an artist and faculty at Ringling College of Art and Design, having taught previously at New Mexico State University, for six years at the University of Florida and two years at St. Lawrence University. He earned his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 2005. His research and work looks at “minor” pivots in modernist narratives, focusing specifically on ecology, language and performance in proximity to architecture, philosophy and meta-modernism. He has shown his work nationally and internationally and teaches courses in photography and extended media, including video, installation and sound.

Sean Miller holds an MFA from University of Colorado Boulder and is a co-founder of SOIL artist-run gallery in Seattle, Washington where he organized and curated multiple exhibitions and started his Art Museum Dust Collection project (with Phil Stoiber and later Connie Hwang). In 2003, Miller founded the John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA), a location variable museum, a conceptual museum project. In 2008, while in residence with Flaxart Studios and exhibiting at Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, U.K., Miller/JEMA presented Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE (2007) and WISH PIECE (1996) and Green’s A Project for the New Free State of Caroline (2008) both based at Golden Thread and performed/presented throughout the city of Belfast. Since 2010, Miller has collaborated with Fluxus artists: Eric Anderson, Philip Corner, Ken Friedman, Bibbe Hansen, Billie Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Ben Patterson, and Ben Vautier. Other notable longtime collaborators include designer Connie Hwang, Chip Lord, and Jack Massing.

Chad Serhal is a multifaceted artist and musician known for innovatice collage installations and music projects. He is an MFA graduate at the University of Florida.