On Experiencing Ephemerality

By Rea McNamara

In my neighbourhood, there is a piano store, which I have never visited, as it reminds me of my complicated relationship with the instrument. I studied it seriously, going as far as Level 6 in the Royal Conservatory. But I was never “good enough” due to my approach to playing. Despite being a great sight reader, I lacked in memorization and ear training, solidified by my inability to pass my Level 6 Theory. (I took the examination twice.) 

Such a shame I once allowed a pedagogical system to brainwash me into thinking that as much as I loved music, I did not have the dedication or technical skill. 

So, for many years, I never played. Even though I lugged a Technics SX-PX205 from my family home to my current house, it sat in storage. I unboxed and installed it in my bedroom some years ago, thinking I would play it. Sometimes I would, but most of the time, it sat silent, gathering dust. 

Go there, taking as much time as you wish to explore and experience the place.

I only entered the Academy of Music because Keith Cole told me to. Or rather, Keith gave me a printed-out performance prompt, which told me to do so at the end of his “Observing and Recording: A Performance Talk” workshop, which took place in the TMU Library on October 19, 2022, as part of “Crafting Community: A Symposium on Arts Practice and Research.” 

The prompt came from Marilyn Arsem, an American performance artist. Since the 1970s, Arsem has explored every nook and cranny of the fleeting, present moment: her performances are minimal, site-specific, and often tailored for a single-person audience. She once mounted a 100-day performance at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), involving daily, 6-hour performances — sitting in a chair, looking at a rock, or reading from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time — that would repeat and continue with each new gallery visitor. 

“It sounds like not much was happening, but a lot was happening,” writes conceptual artist Heather Kappalow in her Hyperallergic review (external link)  of Arsem’s 2016 performance. “Or rather, small happenings became large ones, so everything that always happens was still happening, but amplified.” 

A lot is happening with this text; small things are becoming more significant. Keith’s workshop, in the TMU Library, with Keith and the two other participants: Professor Ken Moffatt, TMU’s Jack Layton Chair and an organizer of the Symposium, and the author and artist Sandy McLeod, a mutual friend of Keith and Ken’s. The Marilyn Arsem performance prompt and what it says about Keith’s teaching methodology. Why just read about performance art when you can perform it? 

And then the Academy of Music: which I finally stepped into after more than ten years in my neighbourhood. Ukuleles were displayed, and unopened boxes of Yamaha pianos were stacked against a wall. Above us hung an Oscar Peterson poster ad for Clavinova, their long-running line of digital pianos. 

I should know: I owned one. It was my first piano, the one I learnt my scales, trills, and Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” My first teacher, Mrs. Allen, had long, manicured nails, which I loved to emulate until I switched to the Conservatory, and Mrs. Horsley demanded better touch and a shorter manicure. (She also owned a parrot, sometimes sitting on her shoulder and squawking a car alarm sound whenever I played well.) 

Before you leave, choose one object to bring back as a souvenir. Only one.

At the Academy of Music, I only found out the pianos were electric in conversation with the older man. He had dyed black hair, dressed in a cardigan and opera scarf, and sold the instrument. He played some songs on the digital baby grand, in tune with its different settings. Organ Tutti. Chopin Piano. Mozart Piano. 

We spoke about how Yamaha’s Clavinova has improved. The older man, a professional pianist, once scoffed at how they used to try to sell him on it; now, he can’t even tell the difference. 

Of course, there are still purists. “Russian teachers refuse to teach on anything but acoustic,” he said with exasperation. Their hard-lined stance placed so much pressure on the kids to provide a return on the parents’ investment. 

I took a brochure, which focused on the music school’s offerings, as my souvenir. 

And finally, you must agree never to return to that place again. 

The exchange with the pianist reminded me more of Keith than Marilyn Arsem. 

He is a prolific letter correspondent, often sending through the post packets of photocopied art history textbooks scrawled with Sharpie-weight annotations. My kitchen fridge has often been a gallery of his work. There was the ink penis drawing for many years and, more recently, a disposable camera photograph of my partner and our daughter, taken last summer when she was ten months old. 

The Arsem performance prompt, in some ways, attests to Cole’s generosity in navigating the experience and documentation of performance art, an ephemeral time-based medium.

Throughout his workshop, he eschewed so-serious framings of the form — as art! A global language! A new theatre! — for more direct terms. A performance artist’s instrument is their body, so why not tell a history based on artists that have endured, harmed, bruised, or even modified their body parts? Cole’s history, or lineages, included Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece,” Sylvette Babin’s “Punching Wall,” and William Pope.L’s “Time Square Crawl.” 

For Ono, it meant sacrificing her body — or best outfit — to the snips and tears of a ravenous audience. Like the cabbage-cum-boxing gloves she punched with, Babin’s foodstuff fists evoke the power of pounding out a humble vegetable: it’s a crucial step in the fermentation of a pantry staple. And Pope.L’s famous crawls on hands and knees across the dirty concrete of 1970s Time Square was, in actuality, a means of standing up for its residents at the time, who were disenfranchised and dispossessed. When viewed as not a history but as lineages, Cole seems to ask us to consider experiencing performance art in the past tense, not as solely a viewer but as a descendant: a living force. 

As you can tell, I love Keith’s brain. He’s a generous artist who freely invites his friends and loved ones into his work: the penis drawings, the photocopied and collaged texts, and the disposable camera portraits. There is a profound mischievousness to share, perhaps even overshare. The materials may be tawdry, but an offering remains in their method and exchange: here is my mutable body, zealous mark-making, and wayward lineages. You’ll always be able to find me and through that, what it means to be wholly yourself — being there.