I have finally seen a version of 4'33''. A recording of a contemporary re-staging of the piece. It is a performance, theatre. The original work, as envisaged, can never be recreated. The audience is complicit in the work as the element of surprise and shock is no longer there. They know what to expect; the audience is silent and behaved. They are not awkward and restless, uncertain and outraged as the original audience must have been. The everyday sounds that the work should bring attention to are controlled - a cough here and there, a shift, a rustle and definition from the electronic click of the stop watch at the end of each movement. The soloist is melodramatic in his actions, performing as is everyone in that room for that performance and recording.
John Cage embraced chance, removed himself from the responsibility of making decisions. I wonder what it would be like to so wholly put oneself to the whims of another; thing or person. It sounds blissful, in theory. But in truth I like control. I like to set myself rules for my work, like Cage, and then I record my failure to stick to them. I don't think I could relinquish control entirely. Aesthetic decisions always take over, at some point, in the process of creating and I break my own rules. Did Cage? Did he really keep to the decisions made by dice or a computer? Or did his conscious mind step in from time to time?
John Cage embraced chance, removed himself from the responsibility of making decisions. I wonder what it would be like to so wholly put oneself to the whims of another; thing or person. It sounds blissful, in theory. But in truth I like control. I like to set myself rules for my work, like Cage, and then I record my failure to stick to them. I don't think I could relinquish control entirely. Aesthetic decisions always take over, at some point, in the process of creating and I break my own rules. Did Cage? Did he really keep to the decisions made by dice or a computer? Or did his conscious mind step in from time to time?
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