Never Tilt Your Chair
Performance collaboration
Using over 100 pieces of tuned cutlery, Never Tilt Your Chair creates a shimmering sonic landscape abstracted and built from the humble knife and fork. Using gestures inspired by the history of western dining etiquette, this work comments on the labyrinth of rules associated with human interaction and the use of cutlery at the table. In sourcing instruments for the work, 350 pieces of cutlery were collected over a twelve-month period from ebay, op shops in Australia and antique dealers. Never Tilt Your Chair spotlights the extraordinary sounds of ordinary objects. Three musicians (Devenish, Leah Scholes, Vanessa Tomlinson) undertake a mannered exploration of familiar gestures associated with the dining table, drawing on nostalgia, etiquette, memory to ask questions about social expectations in private and public settings.
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