ARCHIVE VIDEO: PIANO DEMOLITION PERFORMANCE, SPATCHCOCK, 2010
September 3rd, 2016‘SPATCHCOCK‘ nights were legendary: hosted by a community of extraordinarily creative people living in amongst the warehouses in Overbuy Road, London. Raucous, intense, powerful, FUN. As the evenings progressed, one could be guaranteed of becoming quite mashed-up, and continuing well into the following morning…
SPATCHCOCK had asked if I would play an old upright piano – one they were looking to dispose of. Not wishing to pay for its removal, they asked that, as part of the performance, would I mind progressively destroying it… Armed with tools from Rupert Lees‘s nearby workshop, I set about the task of a ‘demolition performance’. The video ends with an ‘encore’ performed off-camera, on another upright, elsewhere in the warehouse.
The debris from the demolition was recycled, and fashioned into functional or decorative items by Rupert Lees; and the strung, iron frame, is still in use today, at Ellis Gardiner‘s nearby studio.
The adventurous and creative spirit that fostered the SPATCHCOCK nights lives on in venues such as New River Studios, just across the way.