pronounced Four minutes, thirty-three seconds or, as the composer himself referred to it, Four, thirty-three[1]) is a three-movement composition[2][3] by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements (the first being thirty seconds, the second being two minutes and twenty-three seconds, and the third being one minute and forty seconds). Although commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence",[4][5] the piece actually consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed.[6][7]
Over the years, 4′33″ became Cage's most famous and most controversial composition.[2] Conceived around 1947–1948, while the composer was working on Sonatas and Interludes,[2] 4′33″ became for Cage the epitome of his idea that any sounds constitute, or may constitute, music.[8] It was also a reflection of the influence of Zen Buddhism, which Cage studied since the late forties. In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that 4′33″ was, in his opinion, his most important work.[9]
David Byrne biked to Town Hall for his “How New Yorkers Ride Bikes” event in 2007. The night began with the audience viewing his helmet-cam footage of his journey there, and eventually he biked right up on the stage.
As a student, Ben-Ner moved his studio practice to his home, and many of his works, such as Moby Dick, feature fantasy play with his family. In an unpublished interview with artist Boaz Arad, Ben-Ner said “I had to choose between being a bad father away from home a lot, and being a good father, staying at home and making concessions. To work at home is a type of compromise.” Themes of exile--of being on an island in the home--recur in other works, including Treehouse Kit (2005), in which the artist uses ordinary bedroom furniture kits to build a tree and other tropical accouterments. While the artist’s family has been on view in his work for years, the 2007 video Stealing Beauty brought their domestic life into a busy IKEA showroom. In this video the Ben-Ner clan, without permission, enacts home scenes in IKEA’s domestic vignettes (showering, sleeping, and bickering). With a humorous nod to their surroundings, father and children discuss the nature of private property and service-based commercial enterprise with a Marx/Engels slant. Pointing to the surrounding showroom as legitimate shoppers pass through the frame, Ben-Ner says, “This house belongs to us. We are the only ones who have the right to use it and the right to exclude others from using it…. Private property creates borders, son.” Source
A still from Guy Ben-Ner’s "Moby Dick" (2000). ; Courtesy of MASS MoCA
Biography
The video artist Guy Ben-Ner became internationally renowned when he represented Israel at the Venice Biennale in 2005. The work he presented there, ‚Treehouse Kit’, deals with a tree made of pieces of furniture, which the artist turns into a tree of survival. It might, thus, serve the modern version of a Robinson Crusoe. Ben-Ner, who completed his art studies in New York in 2003, was the lone survivor already when he showed ‚Berkeley’s Island’ (1999) – the artist squatting, stranded next to a palm tree on a sandy island, in the middle of his kitchen. The quasi domesticated artist is reluctant to accept the roles allocated today to family members. He does the chores, but discusses his unsatisfied desires, and stresses the incongruity between the cliché-like fury of the artist or the savagery of man, and modern lifestyles. Ben-Ner uses his body in the performance videos in order to paint the self-portrait of the family man (Edelsztein). It is also the family man who tries to transmit everyday culture to his son in ‚Wild boy’ (2004), or who, in ‚Moby Dick’ (2000), converts his kitchen into a whaler, which does not hunt legendary animals, as in Herman Melville's novel, but gets to the bottom of traditional myths. Ben-Ner's filmed self-portraits show the artist after he has arrived in reality.
At art school at Yale, I wanted to do a project where the Red Cross would come into the gallery space and conduct a blood drive. There’s something really amazing about the regenerative aspect of donating, and I’m interested in how such a personal thing for a donor has an immediate anonymity.
But when I talked to the Yale dean about my idea for a show, a red flag went up. Another Yale artist had recently proposed a project documenting her self-induced abortions, and maybe Yale still had some raw nerves about the media attention that got. They told me, “We just can’t do this.”
I kept trying and was getting shut down over and over again. Finally, a former professor of mine e-mailed my proposal to Zach Feuer, who invited me to curate a summer show of my installation and work by other artists. I’ve never curated anything before, but he’s giving me a lot of freedom. It’s amazing. Then next month I go back to New Haven for another year of school.
This is one of Marclay’s visual scores, in which found materials are collated as a representation of a sound performance to be interpreted by musicians. It is Marclay’s intention that his film be viewed by performers as a score. Screenplay is compiled from film footage that Marclay spliced into something of a narrative. In addition, he introduced simple, colorful digital animations of lines and waveforms and big, round dots on top of some of the footage. In following series of images, for example, a conductor appears on screen. It is one of the more explicitly music-related sequences in Screenplay, which is more often packed with seemingly random images of buildings and under-water scenes.
In this segment, a thick line traces the path of the conductor’s hand, until, over time, his face is almost entirely obscured:
Marclay’s art often has a magnetic quality, in which the world seems to conform itself to his mindset. For example, in the sequence depicted above, the actions of the conductor, which already were meant to give instruction to musicians, take on a whole new symbolic purpose.
There is a stream-of-consciousness quality to Marclay’s Screenplay. For example, at one point there’s a chase scene that ends up with a door being locked, followed by a close-up of the lock, and then when the key falls out of the lock, something on the floor explodes, which leads to numerous sequences of ever more out-of-control fires, which then leads to scene after scene of water. Each of the segments of the silent, unfolding story is taken from a different pre-existing source, but through Marclay’s editing, they’re combined into something fluid and whole. As with the numerous printed scores on display, Screenplay is running unaccompanied by music — if Marclay uses art as score, in this setting his score is the art.
Bio
Christian Marclay is a New York based visual artist and composer whose innovative work explores the juxtaposition between sound recording, photography, video and film. Born in California and raised in Geneva (Switzerland), he studied sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and at Cooper Union in New York. As performer and sound artist Christian Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records and turntables since 1979 to create his unique "theater of found sound." Marclay has collaborated with musicians such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Shelley Hirsh, Christian Wolff, Butch Morris, Otomo Yoshihide, Arto Lindsay, and Sonic Youth among many others. A dadaist DJ and filmmaker his installations and video / film collages display provocative musical and visual landscapes and have been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art New York, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris, Kunsthaus Zurich, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Gregory Crewdson is the one that looks like a dairy cow
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The New Yorker has posted a fascinating time-lapsed video of Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator for forty-one hours. Mr. White stays remarkably calm during his ordeal.
This was originally part of an art performance. That idea originated in the mind of German artist Johannes Wohnseifer. He enlisted skateboarder Mark Gonzales. Cheryl Dunn them document this performance and turned footage and interviews into a film called "Backworlds for Words." Jason Schwartzman got permission to remix the video footage and sync it to the music for a music video for his band Coconut Records. The song title is "West Coast."
Check out some of the original footage at Dunn website in bio below (interesting hearing new soundtrack).
Johannes Wohnseifer (1967- , Germany) In 1998, he produced an exhibition at the Abteiberg Museum in Germany. He came up with the idea of exhibiting minimal artworks and having a professional skate boarder skate between them. His approach to incorporating street culture directly into artistic context has been highly successful.
Mark Gonzales (1969- , USA) Most recently, Mark Gonzales was also featured in the music video, "West Coast" by Jason Schwartzman's (Rushmore's Max Fischer) band, Coconut Records. This was a skate video sequence originally filmed in 1998 at a German Museum, but was edited and synced for this music video with his permission.
Cheryl Dunn (1960- , USA) http://www.cheryldunn.net/films/back_worlds_for_words.html Her second film, Backworlds for Words (1999), is a documentation of a skateboard ballet, choreographed by artist/professional skateboarder Mark Gonzales for the Stadtisches Museum in Monchengladbach, Germany. The film includes footage of the actual performance as well as candid interviews and documentation of Gonzales performing poetry readings around Germany.
Jason Schwartzman (1980- , USA) Prior to acting, he was the drummer for the band Phantom Planet (best known for their hit single "California," the theme song for The O.C.). In 2007, he created the pop/rock solo act Coconut Records. The first CD was released on iTunes on March 20, 2007. Songs include "West Coast," "Nighttiming," and "This Old Machine."
Paradise ahead, in which he explores the possibillities of performance art in Second Life or Uncertain Location, about which he writes:
In the summer of 2006, NASA announced that the original Apollo 11 moon landing tapes were missing. The video broadcast on television was transmitted through space and then shot off a video monitor in Houston ground control. The originals were better resolution, higher contrast and crisp in detail. No one has seen then this footage. Many have asked questions about the truth of this event.
I have completely recreated a 1-minute segment of the original — where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin plant the American flag with the lunar lander in the background. At exhibitions, I give or sell prints from the recreated video. As the public takes home prints, I erase the corresponding frames from my own.
Created by the new British theater company 1927, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea combines live music, performance and storytelling with films and animations. Using the aesthetic of silent film, a series of comic vignettes unfold in which the performers interact with the animations.
The dark whimsy presented in these ten vignettes is fun for the whole family.
Reviewed by Ellen Wernecke
A cursory description of "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" would only pigeonhole it as the ur-Fringe show: A combination of hand-drawn animation, silent-movie acting and live vaudeville piano, invoking fairy tales and Satan, it seems (on paper) like the kind of show destined to stay on the edges of popular theatre, despite its award as the Best of Edinburgh at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. But no one who caught "Between the Devil..." at its short stay at PS122 would have described it as morbid or Gothic; even though it occasionally touches those poles, this deeply weird show was far more funny than creepy.
The show, created by the performance group 1927 (actresses Suzanne Andrade and Esme Appleton are seen on stage, with Lillian Henley at the piano, and filmmaker and co-director Paul Barritt behind the scenes), consists of 10 "terrible tales" told through film and live acting, often simultaneously. The stories aren't related, although two of them are narrated by very similar pairs of creepy sisters. Some deal directly with death, as in the opening vignette, "The Nine Lives of Choo Choo le Chat," which depicts how each of the nine lives of an unlucky cat ended. Others apply the show's magical-realist logic to subjects like door-to-door salesmen ("Sinking Suburbia") and the allure of the deep fryer ("Home Sweet Home").
These vignettes feel (and thanks to Henley's accompaniment, sound) like a series of lost shorts unearthed from a five-cent carnival booth. Andrade and Appleton have the faces and mannerisms of silent-movie actresses, and perform with impeccable timing to the films shown behind (and around) them. But the night's funniest gag was the kidnapping of an audience member to pose as "Grandma," who is dressed up by the actresses and then taken behind the screen as the film shows the tortures two sisters enact on her. Even without that participatory interlude, "Between the Devil..." is a lively and inventive little show which, pending 1927's world tour, will hopefully gain a larger audience than Fringe-goers.
On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station. Over 500,000 people rush through Grand Central every day, but today, things slowed down just a bit as commuters and tourists alike stopped to notice what was happening around them.
9-11:30 AM Group 3 (Pugh, Contreras, Coleman) -- Performance Starting Time 10:15 AM
11 - 1:30 Group 2 (Pellegrini, Meyer, Germanotta, Craddock) Performance Starting Time 12:15 PM
1-3:30 Group 1(Harvey, Merola, Parker, Bell) Performance Starting Time 2:15 PM
These time periods are for setup, event, critique, and cleanup. After each performance the room must be returned to its original condition by the performance group.
The class will meet as an entire group only for the three events and critiques. During the breaks, groups (you will not be allowed in the room) should feel free to roam campus -- go eat-- go home-- do whatever they would like but must be outside the classroom door ten minutes prior to each of the three performance starting times. If you are late, you will not be allowed into the classroom and your grade will suffer.
Please come prepared for your performance -- projectors, cameras, mics, cleaning supplies (bags, broom, dust pan, etc.), props, stands, lights, etc. . The success of the event is up to the group.
In the Near Future stages a set of anachronistic and speculative actions in an ongoing investigation into the figure of the protester. Once a day, from November 1 to November 9th, 2005, Sharon Hayes stood on the street with a sign at nine different locations throughout New York City. Audience was invited to come and document these actions.
On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California by a radical political organization called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). From February to April, 1974, the SLA and Patty Hearst made four audio tapes in which she addresses her parents on the subject of her kidnapping, the SLA's ransom (that the Hearst family feed all the poor people in California) and the family and the FBI's actions during the ordeal. In the last tape, Hearst renames herself Tania and announces that she is joining the SLA in their struggle. From June 2001 to January 2002, Sharon Hayes performed a respeaking of each of the four audio tapes. In each instance, Hayes partially memorized the transcript of the audio tape and spoke the text in front of an audience to whom she gave a transcript of the text. She asked them to correct her when she was wrong and to feed her a line when she needed it.
Born in 1970, Sharon Hayes gained her MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio at UCLA’s Department of Art (2003). Part anthropological fieldworker, part dramaturge, New York based Sharon Hayes’ artistic role is to orchestrate and document collective activity in the public domain. Her video, performance and installation projects have engaged individual and group perceptions of political events and ideologies, employing conceptual and methodological approaches borrowed from artistic and academic practices such as theater, film, anthropology, linguistics, and journalism. Hayes’ work has been shown at P.S. 1 Museum of Contemporary Art, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Parlour Projects, Dance Theater Workshop, and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. She has also shown in galleries, exhibition or performance spaces in Bogotá, Berlin, Copenhagen, Malmö, Vienna and Zagreb. Hayes was a 1999 MacDowell Colony Fellow; received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (1999); and she was a participant in the Whitney’s Independent Study Program (1999-2000).
