Cine Qua Non #6 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Illuminating Postmodern Elements in the Music of John Cage (M.A Thesis)
PQDT Open (California State University, Dominguez Hills), 2015
While the American composer John Cage is often classified as an influential figure in the realm of modernist music, the controversial nature of Cage's work has proven to be more far-reaching than many had initially contended. Through a process of re-examining the work of Cage through a postmodern lens, this thesis rejects the notion that Cage was confined to the realm of modernism, and demonstrates that the composer not only exhibited postmodern tendencies through his ideas and concepts, but also aesthetically in his compositions. By illuminating these postmodern compositional practices and postmodern-influenced belief systems expressed by Cage as an artist, a reinterpretation of the composer and his work is carried out, while also addressing criticisms leveled toward Cage as a postmodernist. Through this contemporary reanalysis, the thesis demonstrates that Cage was a composer that transcended genres and classifications to ultimately resonate as a viable figure of postmodern music.
'Revision of the Golden Rule': John Cage, Latin America, and the Poetics of Non-Interventionism
Journal of Modern Literature, 2017
Non-interventionism was a guiding principle in Cold War era debates about the United States’ proper role in Latin American affairs, and it also serves as a paradigm for understanding inter-American cultural exchange during the period. The Latin American travels of composer, poet, and multimedia artist John Cage provide a means of exploring this. Cage’s writings about his visits to São Paulo and San Juan, as well as his correspondence with Latin American colleagues like Brazilian Poet Augusto de Campos, point to the ways in which Cage’s aesthetics of indeterminacy became a model for non-interventionist cultural diplomacy. This idealistic vision of hemispheric relations stands in stark contrast with the aggressive Cold War cultural policy initiatives that the US carried out throughout Latin America. However, as Cage’s reception at the 1985 Bienal de São Paulo indicates, non-interventionism’s manifestation as cultural practice became fraught in similar ways to its implementation as policy.
2013
This article sketches the development of Jean-François Lyotard’s musical thinking through the lens of the composer with whom he was most often associated, John Cage. I contend that the affinity Lyotard felt for Cage’s work came about on the basis of two shared concerns: first, an interest in creative strategies hinging on passivity and indifference and, second, a related desire to approach singular events free from the interference incurred by human cognition. In Lyotard’s “libidinal” phase, as well as his later Kant-centered work, his investigations indicate that Cage’s artistic practice is founded upon a series of logical paradoxes. However, it can be argued that Lyotard’s revision of Cage’s aesthetic theories in post-Freudian terms more openly faces up to these paradoxes than Cage’s own sunny Jungianism does.