From: lambdac-AT-globalserve.net
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 19:14:49 -0500
Subject: Re: Cage and Nietzsche -- autism



Malgosia, you wrote-

>This is an extremely difficult point for me.  Is it possible that there is
>an essential difference between performance, which is what I do, and other 
>arts?  I often hear painters say that they paint "for themselves".  
>OK, now in performance there is a certain meaning of "for" such that one
>could perhaps make the same claim.  Ben Vautier did what was perhaps the 
>most quintessential performance: he sat on a chair, in the middle of a 
>street, with the sign "Look at me.  This is all that is needed.  I am art."
>One could argue that he did this for the experience of thusly sitting in the
>street, he did it _for_ himself.  But what is this experience?  Can one
>describe its nature without thinking of it as an act of claiming territory,
>of displaying oneself in this act of claiming?  Without this, one reduces
>the experience to an act of sitting in a chair, which, it seems to me, is 
>an altogether different experience, even if the chair happens to be in the
>street.  
(...)
>If I said that Vautier's "sitting performance" was pedagogical, would you
>agree?  Let me say it, experimentally.  Vautier's performance was pedagogical,
>Cage's _4'33"_ was pedagogical, Cage's lectures are pedagogical.  

Would you say, Malgosia, that Vautier's 'sitting performance' was
pedagogical had he just sat on a chair in the middle of the street
_without_ a sign?  We suspect that you would, given the sheer (or
'epic') shock value of the performance.  Assuming you will concur (?) -
would the performance still have a pedagogical value had Vautier done
just this because he was distracted  - say, it was night time and he was
a bit drunk or 'out of it', found a chair, placed it in what turned out
to be the middle of the street, soundly fell asleep only to awake next
morning sitting in the middle of the traffic?  For the audience of
automobilists trying to avoid him while cursing both him and his mother,
the performance would still have the same jarring affectation (if not
more, since there was no sign unequivocally indicating that the
performance carried a statement to be interpreted); but _our_ imaginary
Vautier might never have intended his act as a performance, let alone as
a performance for an audience.  In other words, the pedagogical value
for himself would have shrunk either to nothing - or become reduced to
the opposite of the intended effect (and affect) of inducing a
risk-experience ('now I know that I should not be so distracted as to
sit in a chair in the middle of the street.'..).

Now maybe you will say instead that the sign cannot be separated from
the performance, it is an integral part of it.  Leaving aside the
ambiguity of the sign (the beholder of his performance might think for
example that Vautier was protesting the allocation of funds by some
National Council for the Endowment of Arts to artists which, in his
mind, did not deserve support - "Look at me - art is this easy - that's
all it takes to get some cacao"...), is it fair to suppose that
_without_ the sign and, barring any lapse like the one we ventured above
(woke up next morning in the middle of the traffic), the act can only be
seen effectively as still a performance, either for oneself (how does it
feel to sit on a chair in the middle of the street, how does it feel to
discharge my suicidary tendencies and tempt death, how does it feel to
see others careening to avoid me, etc), or for an audience (how does it
feel to be compelled to avoid me, how does it feel to be jarred by my
sitting on a chair in the middle of the street barring your path, etc),
or for both.  At the limit, if the pedagogical implication of the act
was solely the production of one's death - eg Vautier really wanted to
die by being run over by a truck, but wanted chance to select the truck
- its disrupting effect would be no less than that of Vautier's actual
performance (with the actual sign).  Suppose further that 'our' Vautier
succeeded in killing himself, or that the actual Vautier was run over by
a truck: in the first case, the absence of a sign would immediately lead
most people to conclude it was suicide ('only a cuckoo would sit on a
chair in the middle of the street'); but in the second instance, the
presence of the sign would deter them, since it would always suggest
that he was either run over by accident (a driver failed to see him) or
by design (a driver did not like his message).  

In fact, it is the sign that delimits the perspective which invites us
to see Vautier's actual performance as art - which almost verges on the
reactionary, since it serves as a sort of justification for the act that
effectively lessens its capacity to stun (granted, without the sign he
might have been expedited to a mental asylum for disrupting a public
venue - but such is the politics of sanity that demands an excuse for
one's acts, and such is the politics of anti-art that cannot avoid
interpretation and is condemned either to make visible its own
interpretation or effectively carry none [just like Life!]).  However,
what we are trying to get at is this - that, with or without a sign,
with or without the intention to violate an audience - Vautier, when all
is said and done, committed the act for his experience of it, whatever
it includes (a message, no message, my feelings, my feelings of their
feelings, my feelings for their feelings, etc).  What else do those
childish discussions of who takes the most risks - which so much disgust
you - stem from, but the elation at the experience of having lived
through the 'performance', of having done it for oneself, for the
kicks?  There is a whole nosography of the death instinct at play in
this respect (which also and directly brings the autistic element into
play): the very desire which leads to the act is at stake here.

Now, when we alluded to the teaching of oneself, to a performance which
is to the benefit of oneself, this really did not imply - as you
yourself put it - that there is any real Vautier whom this performance
was for.  A performance for oneself is solely a performance for the sake
of its experience - not production for production's sake, art for art's
sake, or for some sort of narcissistic pleasure, or mediumatic
communication.  Hence, the choice of the experience matters, must
matter, if nothing else, for one's desire to perform, produce, create.

>When Cage
>speaks through both sides of his mouth, this is a pedagogical strategy.
>All of these things construct situations, and the situations they construct
>seem to involve, in some crucial way, other people. 

Let us assume that Cage succeeded in creating a koan-like situation
(theory of no-thing, theory of some-thing, etc) - ie a 'pedagogical
strategy' - in his writings, as he did with his music, can we really say
that he induced the construction of situations which elicited other
people to become involved, as actors in that situation or agents of the
situation?  In the current meaning of the term 'situation' - yes, but
certainly not in the SI's notion of what a situation implied as 'a
unit(y) of behaviour in time'.  Cage's situations (a concert, a lecture,
a meditation, etc) would be seen as anti-situations, no different than
any other anti-situations which embody the reality of Capital as
survival.  We are not saying that the SI was correct, nor are we calling
for any judgements here - it is just that there is no way one can relate
Cage's or Suzuki's performances, with all they contain to compel the
audience into some form of involvement, with such immediacy  to the
concept of 'constructing a situation' (see for instance SI, #2, 1958,
pp.6-7, what it says and fails to say about Cage).  

This is not to mention the fact that it is the notion of programme which
becomes essential for the SI (much as D&G emphasized their notion of an
experimental programme which is not a method or a 'personal style' [more
Cornetadas] but a plan to be made consistent), whereas Cage explicitly
rejects any such notion (no-continuity means the continuity that just
happens; if you search for continuity you only succeed in excluding
continuity).  Cage is at the heart of experimental music, but the
apology of the discontinuous is still an aesthetic credo, a preferred
way of viewing the production of the continuum - a territorialization
within the process.

Lambda C


	--- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---