The Poetry Machine, 2017
Note: please sit in the chair and play the organ to experience this work.
A vintage Wurlitzer organ from the 1950’s sits in the middle of the gallery. Sitting on top of it, are various old speakers and gramophone horns. If a key is pressed on the organ, you hear Leonard Cohen’s beautiful, gravelly voice reading a poem from The Book of Longing. Each key on the organ contains a different poem from the book. They can be played one at a time or all at once. If you press one key singly and then another, it is like creating different linkages between Cohen’s poems, almost like creating new poems from his words. Uncanny juxtapositions can take place. If you press numerous keys at once, a wonderful cacophony of Cohen’s voice surrounds you.
“With this piece we were attempting to create a magical machine that would be a small monument to Leonard Cohen’s brilliance.” – Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.
Credits:
Poetry written and performed by Leonard Cohen from The Book of Longing, published 2007 by McCleland and Stewart.
Special thanks to Robert Kory and The Estate of Leonard Cohen.
Dedicated to Leonard Cohen 1934-2016
Excerpt below from An Inventive Leonard Cohen Museum Exhibition Lives Up to His Legacy (Mostly) by Stacy Anderson on Pitchfork.com
The best installation in the show is Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Poetry Machine, a bespoke Wurlitzer organ surrounded by stacks of speakers. Each key connects to an audio clip of Cohen reciting a poem from his 2006 collection, Book of Longing. When pressed together, in a chord, these stanzas clash, judder discordantly, and, occasionally, harmonize. After I paw at the organ for a little while, a woman in a blue gown slides onto the bench and begins stabbing the keys with the sharp, ostentatious movements of a concert pianist, as Cohen’s voice falls over itself in surreal volubility. It feels fitting. Poetry, to Cohen, could have a melody, but it didn’t require one; it just needed to be lived.
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