Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 16:03:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Cage and Nietzsche -- autism


LC,

Please accept my capitulation in the matter of autism, and also my 
disagreement with your "[so fast?]" -- which, however, you may have extended 
mockingly.  In which case I withdraw my disagreement. 

I am capitulating for two reasons.  First, there is no other way to pay 
extravagant enough homage to your wonderful variations on the Vautier theme.
Thus, even if you were dead wrong in the matter of autism, I would still 
have to capitulate.  Secondly, far from being wrong, you are, on the contrary, 
right.  I have to agree with this:

> 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).  

I want to note, however, that in this formulation -- as in my "the experience
of painting is complete in itself" -- there is not a trace of the sharp edge 
that made me object to your original phrase "the autism of art".  In fact, 
the main reason for my capitulation is that we have both now reformulated the 
"autism" idea in such a way that it seems absurd to object.  What is one going 
to say?  "No, the experience of painting is _not_ complete in itself, 
something is missing from it" ?  "No, Vautier did _not_ commit the act for 
his experience of it, whatever it includes, but for something other 
than that" ?  So was the edge just a rhetorical spur, or has something 
essential been lost in these translations that have carried us to a point where
to object has become absurd?

I want to repeat the following passage of yours, just to make it sit there, 
as if on a workbench, in progress.

> 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.

Ok, so then you say:

> Can we really say
> that [Cage] 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).  

About this, I think you are not as right as you think you are.  Many of Cage's
"situations" are indeed as you describe, but others have to do with
"compositions which are indeterminate with respect to their performance"
-- this was an important concern for Cage.  It seems to me that these are
a bit less far removed from the SI's notion of 'situation' than, say, Cage's
lectures or his _Music of Changes_.  Assuming that they are predominantly 
meant as an experience for the performers (an assumption which one may 
or may not choose to question, but we will get more mileage from not 
questioning), the experience that the performers wind up constructing for
themselves seems to me in many respects similar to a derive.  There is an
essential difference: that here it is Cage who is setting up the experience, 
who is supplying its lineaments -- whereas a derive contructs the experience
by, so to speak, experientially reclaiming a pre-existing place, not by 
experiencing something constructed by someone for the purpose of providing 
someone else with a particular kind of experience.  This _is_ an essential 
difference.  I wonder if we can articulate it.  


-m


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