Joseph Beuys/Nam June Paik Klavierduett cdr

cdr
2011/1982/1978
new
Memorial concert for Fluxus' manifesto writer & de facto leader George Maciunas. Beuys and Paik put two pianos facing one another along with a couple of mics & an alarm clock. And until the bell rings they're in freefall. Paik grew up with classical piano lessons, so he moves through some tone clusters, cracks minor chords open like eggs, & quotes WC Handy & Gershwin (which causes Beuys to lean into the microphone & hum 'Summertime' in an endearing, tuneless baritone). Beuys bangs happily on whatever's handy, blows on the mic, & eventually leans over with it to hit the piano strings directly. Paik & Beuys met in the early 60s when Paik's family moved to Germany & he attended college there. Beuys was already a professor, being a generation older & famously having fought in WWII (although the oft told story about Beuys' rescue from a plane crash by Tartars who wrapped him in felt & fat is likely made up). Maciunas funded the first Fluxus concerts with a job as a designer for the US Air Force, stationed in Germany, so the two performers were some of his first cohorts. I suppose the concert is neither as perversely contrarian nor as anonymous as Maciunas himself would have had it, but it is rather melancholy & gentle, which befits both a memorial & Maciunas' decree that art interact with 'non art reality'.