A hammer in perpetual motion / The keyboard is the world

Documentation of a hybrid performance-lecture featuring the music and ideas of "Larry Brown," a fictional composer and Marxist, presented at Simon Fraser University on Jan. 15-16, 2011. The score of "Brown's" piano work A Hammer in Perpetual Motion is reproduced in its entirety. The musical work incorporates musical and biographical references to African-American singer and activist Paul Robeson and the Chilean communist singer-composer Victor Jara. The accompanying text, The Keyboard is the World, adapted from its original performance, examines A Hammer in Perpetual Motion as a political artwork in terms of its instrumentation as material means of production and its incorporation of historical and biographical material into compositional method, as well as the varying readings and usage of political artists and their work to create cultural currency for audiences, states, and other artists.