The Fragment in Itself

Suchan Kinoshita encourages audience participation. Her work comprises scenarios that are at once theatrical and easy-going in relation to actual everyday experience. A pervasive sense of fun or playfulness often foils a more melancholic proposition. Her work, Das Fragment an sich, translated as “The Fragment in Itself”, refers to a snippet of music by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche involving the preparation of a piano whereby all the keys corresponding to notes that don’t occur in the composition are removed. The work itself is an appeal. The superfluous mechanical bits of the instrument are strewn around it on the floor, whilst the sheet music and an empty piano stool invite the viewer to play obviously only one composition. On one hand, the idea conveyed is that a fragment, part of a bigger whole, is sufficient and not to be the point of departure for some desired reconstruction; and on the other hand, we get the message that a fragment is all there is.