Musical instruments and jewellery share several fundamental similarities: a rich tradition of craftsmanship, function, ornamentation, and inherent value. Both are meant to last generations and to be passed from individual to individual. Thus when an instrument or a piece of jewellery is no longer wanted or needed it falls into a particular space of limbo, the owner wishes to part with the item yet at the same time hopes that it will continue its existence. It is in this way that the group A5, Adam Grinovich, Romina Fuentes and Annika Pettersson, came into contact with a piano.
From its inception the piano has a natural connection to the human body. The piano is built for the body, and according to a human
being. The piano can be viewed as a jewel within a room, yet its full value and potential is not realized until it enters a symbiotic relationship with a person. The piano is an embodied idea with a sensitive cultural identity and sentimental value.
The piano in contemporary urban living is quickly receding into a vestige of the past. In a rapidly evolving world the piano represents an unnecessary mechanical goliath, a sharp formal contrast from minimal modern aesthetics. Our world is one of multi-functioning gadgets, reduced to the smallest possible size and shape, performing as many tasks and functions as conceivably possible. For this reason a piano is practically useless, however, the rich traditional background and romantic history of the piano has a specific allure. A5 confronts this tension by reducing the piano into digestible pieces, physically and conceptually, removing its sole function as an instrument while highlighting its cultural mystique. The result is a sum of all parts that greatly differs in aesthetic but maintains a similar impact of the emotive potential hidden within the structural composition of the piano itself.
“Aeon Profit – Piano Forte” is by nature an installation, but taken from the vernacular of the tradition of jewellery. It borrows its aesthetic from common jewellery store displays, where scores of individual articles are laid out ad infinitum in order to entice the viewer/buyer into selecting a piece that best suits his or her taste. At the same time the overall impression is that of an irregular pattern or decorative motif that serves to activate a variety of different spaces. This dynamic shift between the economy of a pawn shop and the extravagance of hand printed wall paper further reinforces the concept of the piano as a useless object scrapped for parts as versus a representation of status and class.
In the exhibition “Aeon Profit – Piano Forte” A5 set out to explore the existence of the piano, breaking it apart from its original human function, by introducing a contemporary ornamental function. A5 attempts to recreate the pianos identity in a new constellation and a different perspective on connecting to the human body.
The complex mechanisms contained within a piano provide a wide spectrum of materials and forms, not unlike the organs contained
within a human body. Together with existential values, we create and accumulate to become the being that we are.
“Chopping up a piano transforms it into bits – not parts – cut along lines that obey a different logic than that of articulated movement… …it seeks to exhaust an unassessable quantity of inventoried cuts, hanging off ropes like an erratic map of the bits they come from.”
–Benjamin Lingnel
A5 is a platform for discussion insofar as every project is designed to cultivate the possibility to freely exchange ideas. It is through dialogue and conversation that A5 expands its territory. Since the groups’ onset, A5 has made a specific effort to find new connections between the body, material, and the relation of persons to jewellery.
