Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Floor 6

Born 1983 in Anchorage, AK, on Dënéndeh and Dena’ina Ełnena lands
Lives in Los Angeles, CA, on Tongva and Gabrieleno lands

Nikita Gale has proposed that “bodies are never entirely absent from what we refer to as technology.” The player piano seems particularly haunted by the body, inviting us to imagine pianists working the instrument. In TEMPO RUBATO (STOLEN TIME), Gale underscores this uncanny absence by silencing the instrument’s musical functions and leaving only the sound and image of its mechanisms, which have been amplified through a custom-built sound and lighting system. The work’s title is a musical term that describes the expressive freedom taken by a performer when interpreting a score, and a form of acknowledgment of the space between a score and its performance.

Gale worked with an attorney, the licensing organization ASCAP, and a team of technologists to create an instance where the performance of a musical work without the original sound retains traces of the instrument being played. This circumstance considers whether or not the performance still constitutes the work and is therefore considered legal property, ultimately asking if it is possible to locate authorship through the mechanical gesture alone.