Urban Play

Conservatory for Discarded Pianos

For Urban Play Monika Gora and Gunilla Bandolin have created a pavilion full of old pianos collected in and around Køge. The pavilion is placed at the port site as a gigantic instrument that you are welcome to occupy and play. Instead of being forgotten or thrown away the pianos get new life when visitors play on them. Visitors are encouraged to play the pianos – and in relation to a jazz festivaland other events special concerts will be played on the old pianos.

Artists’ statement:

Pianos are unwanted in our time. They seem too big, too brown, too square for our white washed interiors. First they are being thrown out from the real estate agent’s advertisements. Then they get conditional stays in attics and basements. Soon no one would even like to pay the rent for temporary storing them. Any young girl or boy who starts to learn piano soon receives a modern electric piano for birthday. Pianos are garbage in our time. Maybe there will be other times! Until then, we would like to make you aware of their precarious situation, by making this conservatory for discarded pianos. Please honour them by playing a last tune.

Biography

Monika Gora (SE) is a landscape architect and artist. She creates places that are both landscape art and playrooms where the relation between shapes and the body are researched and light and materials meet the urban context. To Gora the landscape and the urban space are places for playing and investigating and for bringing the senses into play. She pushes the boundaries between landscape architecture, architecture and art.

Gunilla Bandolin (SE) is also an artist and landscape architect. She works with land art, architecture and sculpture focusing on their relation to the surroundings. Both traditional artistic materials such as bronze and stone as well as newer synthetic materials are used for the works. The structures she creates take the shape of places where people can meet nature’s different elements

Gora and Bandolin have been working together since the 1990s during periods. Their joint works interpret our social and urban life with a sense of humour.

Monika Gora also participated in our urban breakfasts on contemporary art, urban space and temporality.

For more info:

Monika Gora: www.gora.se

Gunilla Bandolin: www.bandolin.se