{"id":567,"date":"2025-05-27T19:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/?p=567"},"modified":"2025-06-03T19:54:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T19:54:35","slug":"the-sight-of-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/the-sight-of-music\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sight of Music"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sylvia Solakidi<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vexations<\/em> by Eric Satie, durational performance (13 hours) by pianist Igor Levit (born 1987), staged by artist Marina Abramovi\u0107 (born 1946), set design by David Amar, lighting by Urs Sch\u00f6nebaum, performers Jia-Yu Chang Corti and Sara Maurizi. Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, April 24, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A soundless \u201cshhhhh\u201d opens my eyelids. Igor Levit\u2019s finger shifts from the black key to his rounded lips; silence until he returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How long has he been playing? \u201cDon\u2019t\u2019 look at your watch,\u201d said Marina Abramovi\u0107 during her introductory conversation with Mark Ball, the artistic director of the Southbank Centre. The height of the music score pile on the piano measures time; piles of paper sheets are moved to the music stand, those already played are on the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

840 pages in total: the repetitions of the single-page score of Vexations<\/em> that composer Eric Satie instructed in 1893. Igor\u2019s feet brush pages aside, as he returns to his chair. Not a piano stool; this one has a back and armrests. Igor\u2019s legs measure time; they rest on the armrests, they are crossed, stretched out, without shoes; he stands, he leans against the piano, he presses his forehead against the music stand; he drinks water, he eats, he uses tissues. Igor\u2019s right arm measures time: it draws circles in the air, it covers his face. Concentration? Fatigue? His body plays silent music. Igor\u2019s hands measure time; they explore the black and white keys, notes played one by one, fast and smooth, slow and loud; now he sings them, bass played with either hand. Listen, this note is different. Mistake? Not in this performance; variation, rather. Igor\u2019s hands throw piles to the floor with a thud, let single pages flutter through the air, Igor\u2019s feet tap the floor. Noise? Not in this performance; rather the beat of living with this piece. Boosts of energy and calm retreats, the shifting tempo of the map of Vexations-land.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Igor Levit performs Vexations<\/em> at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Photo: Pete Woodhead\/The Southbank Centre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A muffled, rubbing sound. From the charcoal platform where the piano stands, a cube with an attached rectangular part is dragged across the white square grid, the stage floor. Another one. And more cubes, and slanted boxes, several cubes long. Mind the gaps!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Igor Levit performs Vexations<\/em> at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Photo: Pete Woodhead\/The Southbank Centre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first detached fragments become chairs on either side of the platform; I know these chairs: they are like transitory objects not meant for contemplation, which I experienced in Abramovi\u0107\u2019s 2023 retrospective in the Royal Academy of Arts. The platform, this three-dimensional puzzle, was created by David Amar, a composer of objects, who has collaborated with Abramovi\u0107 in transitory objects for her 2024 exhibition in the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two female performers dressed in black and white create the gorges under Igor\u2019s music; I know them, they reperformed Abramovi\u0107\u2019s works in the Royal Academy. They move very slowly; I know this movement, it is a vital element of the Abramovi\u0107 method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What moves them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Igor, enclosed in his chair, distances his body from the piano without his hands losing contact with it; Igor and piano are one single body, they are confined but their music is not, they run the marathon of the 840 pages and their sound body explodes, its movement moves the space, it is taken up by the performers, who free the sight of their music as they gradually detach elements from their platform, from their own body. Look at them now, they resemble Umberto Boccioni\u2019s futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space<\/em>, they are defenceless as their exploded body plays over chasms, and their music\u2026 \u201cFree your mind,\u201d Abramovi\u0107 had advised in her welcome announcement before the spectators took their seats. So, this is what she meant: to take up their movement, which starts from hands on black-and-white keys. To become vexations of space and time, free like them, defenceless like them.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space<\/em>, 1913, CC0. Photo: via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cI hold you for a while and then I go\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrust your memory,\u201d I heard during the introductory conversation. A memory: the performance 512 hours<\/em>, Serpentine Gallery, London, June 2014. The fingers of Marina\u2019s right hand interlocked with mine; her left hand touching my back as she leads me to stand in the passage between the central and one flanking space, with eyes closed, to \u201cfeel the sounds of the school playground\u201d; her whisper in my ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do the two performers whisper as their hands invite the hands of spectators, and touch their arms or shoulders as they lead them to sit on the detached elements of the platform with their eyes closed? They are now being seen by us, who still sit in the stalls, who are the next to take their place; they become as defenceless as Igor, as the performers who move their hands from one spectator to the other. First two, later four, gradually seven on-stage spectators, changing every twenty minutes. Igor does not open up towards space, but towards people; he invites. The dispersed parts of his sound body are adopted by spectators, who sit by him, guard and support him. I am in 512 hours<\/em> again! Because 512 hours<\/em> is not a performance, they are hands that create a moment of connection; Igor\u2019s hands this time. And we all support these hands, we support our transient community, Marina included, when she is brought on stage close to the end of the performance. Leaving for a ten-minute comfort break feels unnecessary; why should I break this bond? But when Igor returns from his break, the community he has created guards this defenceless bond in silence and welcomes him; and me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, this is what Marina meant when she said during the introductory conversation that two performers will help Igor. It is not just because they bring him water and food, but because they help his hands reach the audience. So, this is the reason why the piece is played 840 times. And when Satie noted \u201cvery slowly,\u201d he did not mean that Igor should play very slowly, but that the event should unfold very slowly. This is the \u201cpowerful, transformative energy of duration\u201d that Marina stressed during the introductory conversation. Performers and on-stage spectators unite stage and stalls through a grid of hands and gazes. Look at them, they are mirrored up there! I know this angled mirror over the stage; I first saw it in the 2013 performance of Maurice Ravel\u2019s Bol\u00e9ro<\/em>, in the Opera of Paris, where Marina had used it to create a cosmic space with floating movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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