Ficus Interfaith

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Furniture Music, a multimedia project by Ficus Interfaith commemorating the 100-year anniversary of French composer Erik Satie’s death. Featuring five new table works, each corresponding to a piece of Satie’s music, alongside a selection of terrazzo wall pieces, the artworks on display blur the boundaries between furnishings and fine art. Accompanied by the five compositions by Satie, performed by Molly McCommons and recorded, mixed, and mastered by Charles Heimes, Furniture Music invites viewers to rethink the role that decoration plays in our built environment through the form of sound, art, and objects.

Throughout his enigmatic life, Satie redefined the boundaries of music, devising new modes of expression based on the interplay of words, space, visuals, and sound. Between 1917 and 1923, he wrote his prescient musique d'ameublement, or “furniture music," a set of five short compositions that were meant to be played in the background as opposed to actively listened to. While these works were rarely performed during his lifetime, and never in full, they became direct precursors to Muzak and were later championed by musicians John Cage and Brian Eno. Notoriously eccentric, Satie radically reimagined what music could be, posing aesthetic questions that are still explored today. A recluse until the end of his life, Satie’s final words were “Ah…the cows.”