58 garden snails [Helix Aspersa] sit on an open piano key-board, one on each white key. Viewed down the row of keys, the whorled shells resemble some sort of monopod chorus-line. Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin provides the score, a set of instructions for the piano-player’s hands and a framework for the duration of the piece. Following an orderly beginning, the player’s relentless playing and the snails’ individual antics go off in their own directions, and the memory of what has gone before is marked by the accumulating debris of snail-slime and snail-shit on the piano keys.
Duration: 5’ 22’’