File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9807, message 449


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


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