Simultaneität

John Cages theories on simultaneity, chance operations and indeterminacy influenced the artists of the Fluxus group. The articles features different concepts of Cages notations and the event cards of Fluxus artists. The relations between performances and videos especially in works by Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys are discussed. The relevance of Cage´s concept and artistic practice for these uses of new media is explained.
In: URL: http://dreher.netzliteratur.net/2_Cage.pdf

Dieser Text wurde 2012 geschrieben und im September 2015 überarbeitet.
Ich danke bei Urhebern der Abbildungen herzlich für die Einräumung der erforderlichen Nutzungsrechte.

Geschichten begleiten uns durch unser Leben. In ihnen geben wir Sachverhalte wieder, Erfahrungen weiter und unterhalten uns gegenseitig, indem wir den informativen Gehalt einer Sache anschaulich darstellen. Kurz: Wir erzählen.
Wir erzählen aber nicht nur mit Worten, sondern auch in und mit Bildern, wenn wir in ihnen Handlungen und zeitliche Abläufe wiedergeben und auf bekannte Narrationen verweisen, auf Mythen und konventionelle Sinnbilder. Während in der sprachlichen Äußerung die Beschreibung von Gegenwart, Vergangenheit und Zukunft durch Zeitwörter und grammatikalische Zeitformen geschieht, repräsentiert das Bild als Flächenphänomen vordergründig einen andauernden Zustand. Seine Mittel scheinen die Bilderzählung auf den ersten Blick auf die Gegenwart beziehungsweise eine immerwährende Dauer zu beschränken. Erzählung entsteht in ihm, wenn Vorangegangenes und Zukünftiges imaginierbar werden. Der Inhalt der Darstellung sowie die dargestellten Relationen beeinflussen, wie im Bild Handlung zum Ausdruck gebracht wird.
Inwiefern Darstellungen von Bildraum, Raum im Bild und Handlungsträgern Erzählung und dargestellte Zeitlichkeit(en) beeinflussen können, wird anhand einiger Beispiele aufgezeigt. Für die einzelnen untersuchten Bilder, die stellvertretend für bestimmte Bildtypen stehen können, ergeben sich Spezifika, die durch die jeweiligen Relationen vom Bildraum und figuralen Kompositionen maßgeblich bestimmt werden können.



This text was written in 2012 and revised in September 2015.
I would like to thank the authors of the illustrations for granting me the necessary rights of use.

Stories accompany us through our lives. In them, we reflect facts, pass on experiences and entertain by vividly depicting the informative content of a matter. In short: we tell stories.
But we tell stories also in and with pictures, when we show actions and temporal sequences and refer to familiar narratives, to myths and conventional symbols. While in linguistic utterance the description of present, past, and future is done through temporal words and grammatical tenses, the image as a surface phenomenon ostensibly represents a continuing state. At first glance, its resources seem to limit the pictorial narrative to the present or to a perpetual duration. Narrative arises when the past and the future become imaginable. The content of the representation as well as the represented relations influence how action is manifestes in the picture.
The extent to which representations of pictorial space, space in the picture, and plot carriers can influence narrative and represented temporality/temporalities will be shown by means of some examples. For the individual images examined, which can be representative of certain types of images, there are specifics that can be decisively determined by the respective relations of pictorial space and figural compositions.

A History of Collective Creation examines collective and devised theatre practices in Europe and North America, beginning in 1900. Long associated with U.S., British and French theatre collectives of the 1960s, collective creation in fact has its roots in the theatrical experiments of the early 20th century, emerging just after the rise of the modern director.  Tracing a lineage from explorations of collective creation in the work of Meyerhold, Stanislavsky, Copeau, St. Denis, Piscator, Reduta, Grotowski, and early documentary theatre, through mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, A History of Collective Creation proposes that collective creation played a pivotal role in the evolution of the modern theatre.

Discusses shift in the politics of the avant-garde after World War II.  I argue that the utopian aspirations of the avant-garde are refocused on providing singular, non-binding examples of alternative ways of seeing, thinking, and experiencing everyday life.  Chapters on John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, David Tudor, Stan Brakhage, Gilbert Sorrentino, Samuel Beckett.

Composer John Cage introduced radical concepts such as chance and indeterminacy to the process of musical composition. Earlier pieces employed chance-based systems to determine pitch and duration of notes allowing Cage to write music as if taking dictation. Such scores are played much like traditional music with interpretations by different performers being more or less similar. Later indeterminate works granted so much latitude to performers that each performance of the same score yields wildly different results. Both strategies offered a decentralized method of writing and performing music. Cage's work models a philosophical alternative to Romantic self-expression that has been embraced by many artists. In 2001, a performance of Cage's ASLSP began in a church in Halberstadt, Germany. Using an automated organ, the performance is scheduled to last for 639 years. How does the meaning of a normally ephemeral work change once its scale is adjusted towards the monumental? How does the audience relate to a performance with a multi-generational scope? This paper examines the differences between various interpretations of ASLSP including a firsthand account of the Halberstadt piece.

Composer John Cage introduced radical concepts such as chance and indeterminacy to the process of musical composition. Earlier pieces employed chance-based systems to determine pitch and duration of notes allowing Cage to write music as if taking dictation. Such scores are played much like traditional music with interpretations by different performers being more or less similar. Later indeterminate works granted so much latitude to performers that each performance of the same score yields wildly different results. Both strategies offered a decentralized method of writing and performing music. Cage's work models a philosophical alternative to Romantic self-expression that has been embraced by many artists. In 2001, a performance of Cage's ASLSP began in a church in Halberstadt, Germany. Using an automated organ, the performance is scheduled to last for 639 years. How does the meaning of a normally ephemeral work change once its scale is adjusted towards the monumental? How does the audience relate to a performance with a multi-generational scope? This paper examines the differences between various interpretations of ASLSP including a firsthand account of the Halberstadt piece.