How often do you get to set fire to a piano to fulfill your comps requirement? Pretty much all of campus knows by now that the performance art piece “Piano Burning” happened last Thursday. A flaming piano in the middle of the Bald Spot is somehow harder to miss than a 20-page paper.
Caitlin Schmid ’09, a music and English major, arranged to have the piano burned (it took a lot of negotiation with the Northfield Fire Department) as part of her comps. She was inspired by the works of Annea Lockwood, an avant-garde artist who did a series of works called Piano Transplants in 1969-1972. In them, she did all sorts of things to old, broken pianos, such as burning them, burying them in earth, and dumping them in water. Lockwood herself was in attendance and had the honor of actually setting fire to the piano.
There were balloons (air, not hydrogen) attached to the top of the piano that made satisfying popping sounds at random intervals when the flames hit them. The sight of the burning piano attracted a large crowd, so we all had to pack in close. Some people dragged over a table and stood on it to see better. It took a couple of hours to reduce the piano to cinders. By the next morning, the Bald Spot had been swept clean of all the remains.
