“Is there an art that is dangerous? Yes. It is that art which upsets the conditions of life.”–Charles Baudelaire. What are the conditions of life? Simply put: that which sustains it. Does art sustain life? Does literature? Does poetry? No. None of those practices are required to sustain life. And we are better off for [...]
Posts Tagged ‘John Cage’
This is the book I’m most looking forward to this year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Alvin Lucier, Dalkey Archive Press, David Behrman, David Van Tieghem, Eric Bogosian, Four American Composers, Gordon Mumma, Jill Kroesen, John Cage, John Sanborn, Laurie Anderson, Lovely Music, Meredith Monk, Music with Roots in the Aether, Pauline Oliveros, Perfect Lives, Peter Greenaway, Philip Glass, Robert Ashley, Spalding Gray, Terry Riley, UbuWeb on July 7, 2011 | 2 Comments »
And it’s a reprint, and I already own the original: It’s that good.
The Gary Wilson / John Cage / David Tudor Axis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ariel Pink, Beck, David Tudor, Gary Wilson, John Cage, The Residents on June 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »
I’ve long known that Gary Wilson was a freak (of the most beautiful variety). And I’ve long known about his influence on contemporary musicians like Beck, Ariel Pink, The Residents. But until this morning, I didn’t know about his connection with John Cage and David Tudor. From a 2008 interview with Wilson:
An Interview with Yuriy Tarnawsky, Part 1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alain Robbe-Grillet, Alexander Dovzhenko, Bleecker Street Cinema, Claude Simon, Cubism, Curtis White, Danylo Demutsky, Dostoyevsky, E. Power Biggs, existentialism, FC2, Fiction Collective, Glenn Gould, György Ligeti, Heinrich von Kleist, Hwbrgdtse, Iannis Xenakis, IBM, Ingmar Bergmann, Jean-Paul Sartre, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Cage, Like Blood in Water, linguistics, Luciano Berio, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marguerite Duras, Meningitis, Michael Kohlhaas, Michel Butor, Milton Babbitt, mininovel, MoMA, Natalie Sarraute, New York University, Nikolai Gogol, nouveau roman, Roads, Roads to Freedom, Robert Bresson, Ron Sukenick, Satyajit Ray, St. Thomas Church, Symphony Space, Thalia Theater, The Hypocrite, the Met, The Possessed, Three Blondes and Death, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Yuriy Tarnawsky on February 24, 2011 | 16 Comments »
I first encountered Yuriy Tarnawsky‘s writing in 1998, when I stumbled across a copy of Three Blondes and Death (FC2, 1993) in a Philadelphia bookstore. (A college professor, having noticed my interest in less-than-realist fiction, encouraged me to be on the lookout for any books published by FC2 or Dalkey Archive Press.) Three Blondes was [...]
Why I Hate the Avant-Garde, part 2
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avant-garde, DJ Kool Herc, Frameworks, Johannes Göransson, John Cage, Laurie Anderson on January 4, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Part 1 Re: Johannes’s comment on my recent post, I first saw people using “avant-garde” to refer to work made today in the late 1990s, on the Frameworks mailing list, which is: an international forum on experimental film, avant-garde film, film as art, film as film, or film as visual poetry; film’s expressive qualities, aside [...]
The Multifaceted Mike Batt
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 4'33", A One Minute Silence, Art Garfunkel, Bright Eyes, Elisabeth Beresford, John Cage, Lewis Carroll, Love Makes You Crazy, Mike Batt, The Hunting of the Snark, The Wombles, Watership Down, Zero Zero on June 5, 2010 | 1 Comment »
For the past few weeks, Mike Batt’s “Love Makes You Crazy” has been on constant repetition at my apartment: Like the greatest music videos, this one launches us directly into a fully-realized world that’s simultaneously novel and derivative, four minutes of elaborate production design that ultimately leads nowhere. And it takes its brilliant conceit both [...]
Art as Experience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Allan Kaprow, Arnold Schoenberg, Art Institute of Chicago, atonal music, conceptual art, Dar Williams, Elvis Presley, Happenings, Jackson Pollock, James Franco, John Cage, John Dewey, Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, Meet Joe Black, Out One, performance art, Roger Ebert, Space Invaders, the dominant, Video Games, Yves Klein on April 28, 2010 | 18 Comments »
In the comments section of my last post, Can Video Games Be Art?, I sketched out a definition of art as experience, or even as an attitude, rather than as a thing or a collection of things (see here and here). At the risk of repeating myself, I’d like expound on that position, in case [...]
Exploring John Cage’s 4’33″
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 4'33", David Tudor, John Cage on March 24, 2010 | 4 Comments »
On 29 August 1952, in Woodstock, NY, David Tudor gave the first public performance of John Cage’s “silent piece,” Tacet for any instrument or combination of instruments, more commonly known today as 4’33″. The audience’s reaction was something like this:
What Is Experimental Art?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alec Empire, Arnold Schönberg, avant-garde, Diego Velázquez, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, experimental art, Frank Kermode, Ghost in the Shell, Harry Potter, Henri de Saint-Simon, Impressionism, innovation, J.K. Rowling, James Peterson, John Cage, La Monte Young, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Matei Călinescu, Minimalism, Olinde Rodrigues, outsider art, Philip Glass, Roman Jakobson, Salon des Refusés, serialist music, Stan Brakhage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, the dominant, The Matrix, Titian, Wachowski on March 12, 2010 | 10 Comments »
One typically hears unusual art called three different things, often interchangeably: Innovative Avant-Garde Experimental But what do these three words mean? Do they mean the same thing? I don’t think so, and in this post I’ll point out some basic differences between them. I’ll also define what I think experimental art essentially is, and how [...]
Why Do We Have Readings? (A Polemic)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Anne Waldman, Annual Arizona Spoken Word Festival and Slab City Slam, Basil Bunting, Beat poetry, Bill Allegrezza, Candy Slam, Charles Olson, Cut-Up Method, Dada, Encyclopedia Show, Erin Teegarden, Ira S. Murfin, Jennifer Karmin, John Cage, Kathleen Hanna, Kill rock Stars, Larry Sawyer, Louis Zukofsky, Marc Smith, Miranda July, Myopic Poetry Series, playgiarism, Rec Room, Robert Ashley, Series A, Shanny Maney-Magnuson, Slam, sound poetry on February 19, 2010 | 5 Comments »
This is an intro I wrote for a panel discussion that I moderated last September: “Why Do We Have Poetry Readings?”, part of the daylong Series A Mini-Conference: Conversations about Poetry, held at the Hyde Park Art Center and curated by Bill Allegrezza. I thought it might be of interest given Shya’s avant-garde post and [...]
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