Vege/xations (2014)

A series of birdhouses playing "Vexations" by Eric Satie.
Vege/xations is an installation with six bird-houses in trees along the Southern Molevej in the city of Koege, Denmark . The bird houses each plays short snippet of the composition " Vexations " from 1893 by the French composer Eric Satie .

The original composition by Satie is made up of only three short themes, that are played repeatedly and very slowly. The original score indicated no tempo – just instructions that the performer should sit motionless in silence for several hours prior to performing the piece.
The original musical work is - apart from being slow - very far, since the three themes are to be repeated 840 times . In concerts this typically resulted in marathon performances of durations between 18 and 32 hours.

The bird houses in the work " Vega/xations " plays segments as visitors are approaching the trees. In this way, the artist Mogens Jacobsen, hope to – in collaboration with the audience - to perform a full version of this very long musical work during the summer of 2014 .
Possibly it will be the the slowest and longest lasting performance of this piece of music.


The work was commissioned by NetFilmakers for the exhibition "OpenWire".

Production was supported by the Danish Arts Council Committee for Visual Arts

Thanks to:

NetFilmmakers
Køge Kyst