Press Release
4' 33"
[Three Movements, no
notes]
15 artists and their guests are taking part in a 10-day performance/exhibition
entitled 4'33"
after John Cage's 1952 'silent'
musical composition. The event
held at Magazin4, Bregenz,
is conceived to generate and present new works of ingenuity
and invention, based upon Cage's
original idea that music is all around us if only we are able
to recognise it.
The 'music'
of silence is thereby signified in gesture,
or by proxy, yet is never actually
silent. The original work caused
a public row in the tradition of all the best radical avant-gardes.
A concert pianist, stopwatch
in hand, opened the lid and
without touching the keys closed it after 4 minutes and thirty-three
seconds (the average length of popular tunes,
or of the muzak merchandised in the 1950s).
The audience was, in true form,
outraged by the scandal. Yet
this is a serious work, with
precedence in Eastern traditional forms of expression,
where the thing not stated achieves greater significance.
Can we still be seized in bewilderment in the discomfiting
face of something not immediately recognised as art or music
if it exceeds the frame of our need for convention?
If not, perhaps something is
lost.
4'33"
has been curated by Wolfgang Fetz and Peter Lewis.
It is part of the City of Bregenz's
Summer Festival and celebrates the 15th anniversary of Magazin4.
4'33"
starts on Saturday, July 14th,
and runs through Sunday, 22nd.
Works by Martin Creed and band,
Fabienne Audeoud, Marcia Farquhar,
Salom� Voegelin and David Mollin,
Szuper Gallery, Rosie Cooper,
Patrick Courtney, Cecilia Wee
and guests, |
Mark McGowan, Peter Suchin,
Disinformation, Celine Condorelli
& Beatrice Gibson,
Artists Anonymous and Jo Mitchell and guests will form a spectacle
that unfolds throughout the 10 days in installations,
performances and structures of participation including a party.
The question to be raised by the artists is whether the challenge
or test by their subjective responses to 4'33"
can situate new terms of the axiom,
i.e.
of an 'indeterminate'
musical and artistic form,
by rearticulating Cage's certainty
that it is impossible to achieve the intention of presenting
'silence'.
Martin Creed
Work/Arbeit/Rabota, C-type
print, 41x 60 cm,
2007, Courtesy Szuper Gallery,
London
Artists Anonymous, Fabienne
Aud�oud, Disinformation,
Celine Condorelli & Beatrice
Gibson, Rosie Cooper,
Patrick Courtney, Martin Creed,
Marcia Farquhar, Conor Kelly,
Mark McGowan, Jo Mitchell,
Peter Suchin, Szuper Gallery,
Salom� Voegelin & David
Mollin, Cecilia Wee
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