Playing a Note on the Violin while I Walk Around in the Studio

Bruce Nauman walks around his studio, repeatedly playing a piercing note on a violin, exactly as the title indicates. Combined with the sound of his footsteps, the note provides a penetrating soundtrack for this minimal performance. The camera is positioned somewhere in the middle of the studio on a head-height stand. Nauman walks around the camera and at times out of the frame. He plays a game with the space and with his presence within this space. The performance investigates the action of the artist – the creative act that leads to art – and the studio as a place where art is created. The film camera functions in Nauman’s early works as a means of recording these actions. This performance refers to developments in minimal dance and music that took place in the mid-1960s. These developments had a great influence on the younger generation of visual artists who were exploring what art could be at that time. They resisted a conception of art that was strongly focused on form.