1 edit
Originally posted by Rene-ClaudeRight. Not sure whether to post this - it's probably going to sound desperately pseudy. [Takes deep breath]
2. An artist was paid £12,000 (funded by public money) to put on an exhibition in Cardiff. What did he exhibit? Well........ nothing actually!
He just opened an empty gallery where visitors were invited to 'experience the space' and re-discover works of art they had seen elsewhere by imagining them in the room.
There's a famous/notorious piece of music by John Cage called 4'33" (4 mins 33 secs). Many people refer to it as "4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence". When I first heard about the piece I was told that the pianist at the original performance walked onto the stage, opened the piano lid, timed the three separate movements using his watch (they total 4'33"😉 and then closed the lid and left the stage. I was in my teens at the time and didn't get it at all.
Several years later I read an article about the Scottish compose Peter Maxwell Davies in which it said that he had moved to the island of Hoy to escape the noise of everyday life, including the hum of mains electricity etc and I suddenly saw what John Cage was getting at. When you listen to 4'33" you are treating as music all of the sounds around you that you usually ignore. The car horn in the distance, the person in the row in front opening a toffee, the chap with a tickly cough, the breathing of the person next you, the air-conditioning in the next room - these all are part of everyday 'music' and we don't normally hear them. Cage's genius was to make them the focus of a piece of music and to make us listen to them and treat them as seriously as we might treat a Beethoven Symphony. Now I don't consider them to be the same at all, but I do think it's a fun way to make people rethink their attitudes to background noise. Every other time I have thought of this piece I have suddenly become aware of the sound of my heartbeat, my breathing, the noise of my cat walking along the hallway etc. At the moment I can only hear the fan in my computer and how loud the nasty old keyboard sounds - which makes me think it might soon be time to upgrade my computer!
My original point was going to be that John Cage's piece is often initially considered to be stupid but is (in my opinion) rather meaningful. Maybe this 'empty gallery guy' is doing the same sort of thing? Maybe we are supposed to see the balls of dust, the spider webs and the bits of paint peeling off the radiators as 'art'?
Having reread this I now think a couple of things:
1) Yes it does sound pseudy
2) John Cage _is_ a genius
3) Empty-Gallery-Guy is not as good as John Cage
Final thought: Mike Batt (the chap who invented the Wombles and Chesney Hawkes and who wrote some of the excellent songs that Katie Melua sang) released an album of his own work a couple of years ago. As part of it he included a track of silence and credited the composer as Batt/Cage. John Cage's estate sued for royalties.
They won. Obviously!
In the spirit of fairness and open mindedness and to ensure proper attribution I append the name of the artist and a quote from him.
Empty art gallery Monday October 23, 05:21 AM
Can an empty gallery be a work of art?
Award-winning artist Simon Pope, who has been funded to leave a Cardiff gallery bare, says it is. His controversial exhibition at the Chapter Arts Centre is called Gallery Space Recall.
Pope said the aim was to encourage people to walk around the empty room with gallery staff or friends, discussing memories of other galleries. The 40-year-old, who lives in the city, said: "You can simplify the context and ignore my intentions, but there are also people who know the work and see it in an informed way."
😛
1 edit
Originally posted by daxterMy cats are just happy sleeping under the sun, or parring on my lap..exploiting humans as a food source, and pampering in demand..
i will tell you what will really happen to the world, my friends cat will make an evil cat making machine, the cat race will than take over and we will all be slaves to the cat kings.
cats are too lazy to rule the world, they let humans to deal with stressful businesses.
Originally posted by kyuei wasnt talking about your lazy cat, i was talking about my friends evil cat that WILL take over the world
My cats are just happy sleeping under the sun, or parring on my lap..exploiting humans as a food source, and pampering in demand..
cats are too lazy to rule the world, they let humans to deal with stressful businesses.
BLAAA!!!!!!