Comments on: John Cage’s Shoes–Robert Storr speaks in Paris

By: John Cage | el arte por la arquitectura

John Cage | el arte por la arquitectura — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:07:39 +0000

[...] buenos post sobre John Cage: the artblog, Arts Without Borders, Fakxion, Feo, inútil e inestable, nomepierdoniuna y un blog enteramente [...]

By: M.AMADEUS DEVEREUX

M.AMADEUS DEVEREUX — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 05:52:57 +0000

Lovely article. I have designed a quick poster using those gorgeous shoes for the John Cage for Christmas Number One in the UK campaign. Best wishes.

By: jorge

jorge — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:02:41 +0000

To anyone who was at the lecture: Was there any mention of Cage’s influence on specific women artists?

By: MATTHEW ROSE

MATTHEW ROSE — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:06:47 +0000

Hello Jorge,

Unfortunately I do not think there was a transcript. Storr spoke from some notes, I believe, but nothing written, and certainly not anything that was circulated. There is a possibility it was videotaped. You might contact the American University of Paris and the other organizations to see if such a tape exists and whether you might be able to view it.

Storr is at Yale, so you might simply contact him directly. He’s very open…but as you can imagine, extremely busy.

Best,

Matthew

P.S. http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/

By: jorge

jorge — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:07:00 +0000

any chance someone has either a transcript or a recording of the lecture somewhere?? This is a thesis I would be very interested in hearing.

By: libby

libby — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:23:56 +0000

Am I allowed to take sides here? Are there sides here?
I have to say that store front windows look liked those depressing, graffiti etched things that have been cropping up in Philadelphia. No wonder Storr looks a little depressed.
Back to taking sides. I sorta think Max is right in that life is random (although sometimes it tricks you into thinking it’s run by regulated forces rather than human action, coincidence and laws of nature). The point of art is to not be random–to say something and have a point. But if the art’s very randomness speaks to an issue in life and somehow elucidates it, well then, random works.

By: matthew rose

matthew rose — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:37:12 +0000

Terrific comments, many thanks for thickening the stew. Robert Storr just e mailed me the photo of John Cage in front of the large gray Ab Ex painting by Gerhard Richter. It’s on storefrontwindows.blogspot.com/ Matthew

By: Ricardo Bloch

Ricardo Bloch — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:37:55 +0000

I think Cage and Beuys will be the second generation of heroes of contemporary art. And Warhol? How confusing Warhol is! He is the opposite of Cage, collecting everything and raising it to the level of art, or as Arthur Godfrey used to say, anything, if old enough, becomes art. While Cage allowed for everything to collect itself. No wonder he was a buddhist.

By: max mulhern

max mulhern — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:08:08 +0000

Good piece there.
While randomness is my motto, utter randomness is depressing. I saw the electronic installation called ” Listening Post ” by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin. It is a screen composed of a multitude of small screens which are displaying chat room texts picked up off of the web in real time. Off screen voices read the texts creating a choral effect. At first it has a HAL -like effect and is in turns soothing and funny. There is even some accidental sense and within a few milenia a narrative style book would emerge. Beneath it all is the cry for recognition (like Marclay’s “Telephone” ). But after awhile the randomness is too much and we want to have a one on one dialogue with either the machine or a person. We need to respond and take the conversation somewhere . . . to square it.

That squaring is the same as finishing a work of art or a musical composition. We always need to trim and crop events and our representation of them. We frame chance in finite spaces i.e. games or paintings and as such create islands in the stream of chance driven events.

I would imagine that for most artist there is a thrill to get working and see what happens. But there is also a desire to attain an objective and with regularity. Although every moment in life is a roll of the dice, personal established probabilities are employed towards that end.

As spectators do we really need to be confronted with randomness itself? Isn’t art about creating some thing against all odds?

Bref, who wants to be in anyone else’s shoes? It’s a miracle to be wearing a pair at all!

By: Kim Triedman

Kim Triedman — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:21:12 +0000

(cont.) i actually wrote a poem (below) called “chance operations” about the process which i sent to ashbery. he put it into his archives and sent a copy to the john cage trust, which now also has it in theirs.

Chance operations
(on John Cage’s Music of Changes”)

No one can say just what it was
that Ashbery heard that night. Many heard an
hour of banging, alternating abruptly with
spells of purest silence. Cage had
allowed it,
arranged it,
according not to
his or anybody’s likes or dislikes
but to that oldest of Chinese orchestrators, the
I Ching.

All that one can assume
in the pearled and patchy light of reconstruction
is that
Ashbery went home that night
with the notion of
chance
ringing in his ears; that he
ran the whole way, dizzy and empty and
hemorrhaging at his fingertips; that after a
whole year of looking he found himself
seeing;
and that he
finally understood, after all that time, the
perfect gift and
utter randomness of those
first few words.