© Photograph by Agnès Gania, courtesy of the artist.
“Strumming Music” will be played on the Baltic.
Hit a key on a piano with the sustain pedal pressed down, and you’ll hear the struck string ring out unencumbered. Add another note to make a chord, and the undamped strings will begin to resonate with each other and those around them, creating ethereal harmonics that ghost over the notes being struck by the hammers. This is the principle behind Strumming Music, an early 1970s piece by New York artist and minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, which he will perform for 52 minutes this Friday, 20 August, at 16:00, on the Bastø Fosen ferry crossing the Oslo Fjord, as part of the activities of the eleventh edition of Momentum, the Norwegian biennial of contemporary art.