John Cage – Theatre Piece No. 1

 

 

Also known as the Untitled Event, John Cage's multifaceted event brought together the emergence of performance art with the rise of slide projection as a medium for exploring the conversation between transience and visual representation. John Cage described the event as follows:

 

“At on end of a rectangular hall, the long end, was a movie and at the other end were slides. I was up on a ladder delivering a lecture which included silences and there was another ladder which M. C. Richards and Charles Olson went up at different times. During periods that I called time brackets, the performers were free within limitations”.

 

Katz, V., Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art, MIT Press, 2003.

 

This piece influences my practice not just because of its importance in introducing the use of slide projection and performance as 'happening' but also because of its questioning of narrative and its combination of different media extending the “idea of blending creative practices into everyday life”

 

Alexander, D., Slide Show, Tate Publishing, 2005.