Locus Harmonium

1990

performance / situation, with sound
with audience
elements: sounding metal bar, violin bow, fish (a Sea Bass)
place: Furkapass, Schweiz

» In 1990 I was invited by Marc Hostettler to do something at his Furkablick Hotel in the Alps. (…) I decided to do an action with a fish (…) I began to make many all-day hikes in the mountains searching for a place to deposit the fish during the upcoming performance. On one walk I reached the edge of a glacier. I decided to bury the fish in this huge, slowly melting ice cover of the mountain top. Where its lower edge met the bare mountain rocks, the melting ice made a beautiful dripping sound in the absolute silence of the surrounding environment. (…) On the day of the performance LOCUS HARMONIUM I tied the fish on my back and led a large group of people, single file, to the same place. During the walk up the mountain we stopped two times where I played a resonant solid metal rod with a violin bow. After one and a half hours we reached the place (…) I leaped a crevasse and buried the fish in the snow and ice of the solid glacier.«

excerpt: Terry Fox, works with sound, Saarbrücken 1999, p. 92