In a closed space, his studio, which could be the whole world as a backdrop, Bruce Nauman, fixed horizontally to the floor-wall, plays the chords D.E.A.D on a violin, creating reverberations which course through the meanders of the mind and collide with the walls of the cell.
This escalation of sound, a vast echo chamber, evokes one of his sculptures, produced in 1981: Diamond Africa With Tuned Chair D.E.A.D.
A musical chair is turned upside down on the ceiling. Isolated, imprisoned, it is also capable of playing its own funeral march. In a way, Bruce Nauman uses his body like the chair, as a material which he can manipulate and around which the sound spreads out, extending between life and death, in revolution.

Stéphanie Moisdon