Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 10:53:43 -0400 (EDT) From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com> Subject: Re: Cage and Nietzsche -- An epic digression I have, for many years now, been fascinated with art whose essential quality is that it lends itself to, an in fact invites, epic retelling. "Chris Burden's first performance took place in 1971, in the students' locker-room at the University of California at Irvine. Burden spent five days inside a locker. He had nothing with him except a large bottle of water whose contents were piped to him via the locker above." "In 1971, at the Sonnabend Gallery in NY, Vito Acconci did a performance called _Seedbed_. A wooden ramp was built in the gallery, and the visitors walked over it. Acconci was inside the ramp, masturbating. He talked as he masturbated; his voice was carried over a loudspeaker." "In 1972, Chris Burden did a performance called _Deadman_. Wrapped in a canvas bag, he lay in the middle of a busy LA boulevard. This created a stir among the motorists; the police were called and Burden was arrested for creating a false emergency." "In his 1970 performance called _Conversion_, Acconci attempted to conceal his masculinity by burning his body hair, pulling at each breast -- 'in a futile attempt to produce female breasts' -- and hiding his penis between his legs." "Marcel Duchamp's last work, _Given: 1) The Waterfall, 2) The Illuminating Gas_ is approached through a dark, narrow room. Here, the visitor who knows where to look will find a brick wall containing an old wooden door in which, at eye level, are two small peepholes. Looking through them one sees, bathed in an almost blinding light, the hyperreal scene of a naked woman lying, against the backdrop of a lush illusionistic lanscape, on a couch of twigs and branches, opening her legs towards the spectator." "Teching Hsieh is a performance artist who specializes in one-year performances. On Sept 30 1978, Hsieh began a year of solitary confinement inside a cell which he built within his studio. While sealed in his cell, he did not converse, read, write, listen to the radio or watch television. On April 11 1980, Hsieh punched in on a standard industrial time clock he had installed in his studio -- an act which he was to repeat, for a year, every hour on the hour. On September 26 1981, Hsieh began a performance in which he stayed outdoors for a year, never going inside a building, subway, train, car, airplane, ship, cave, or tent. In the late 80s, he spent a year tied with a 6-foot rope to Linda Montano, without the two of them ever touching." "In 1971, Jay Jaroslav did a performance called _Swing/Fall_, which took place at 112 Greene St in NY. A swing was suspended from the ceiling of the gallery, 12' above the floor. Sitting on the swing, Jaroslav filed through one of the two ropes from which it was suspended, almost to the point of breaking. He then began to swing. The rope held for a long time; the spectators became bored; their attention wavered. Finally, the rope broke, and the fall occurred. At that moment, strobe lights were triggered to go off, blinding the spectators and preventing them from seeing. The fall was recorded on film at 2500 frames/sec. When the film was projected at normal speed, it lasted 25 minutes and the fall's progress was imperceptible to the viewers." "In 1952, John Cage composed his silent musical piece, 4'33". It is a work in three movements during which no sounds are intentionally produced. The work's first interpreter, David Tudor, sat at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, silently moving his arms three times to indicate ends of movements. 'My favorite piece', Cage had written, 'is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.'" What haunts me about these "heroic" pieces is that their meaning seems to be fully contained, if you pardon the expression, in the epic description, and yet these pieces are profoundly "experiential". How can one say, for example, that the meaning of _4'33"_ is contained in its description, when the very purpose of the piece is to have people experience, for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, a specific "silence" -- the unique non-silent silence of a specific time and place? How can one say that the meaning of a performance in which the protagonist, for a whole year, punches a clock every hour on the hour, is contained in the one-sentence description which I have just given you? Of course, this dichotomy between, on the one hand, the arduousness, or the aching uniqueness, of the experience and, on the other, the possibility of its re-telling, is characteristic of all heroic deeds. This is perhaps simply equivalent to saying that heroic deeds are by definition "exemplary". I am bringing this up because it seems to connect to the story of Cage's disrupted concert, and, in a manner far less clear, to the problem of "insistence ". -m --- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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