JOHN CAGE ON ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
A dialog with John
It is a question, then, of seeing in the dark, not slipping over things visually. Now that Rauschenberg has made a painting with radios in it, does that mean that even without radios, I must go on listening even while I'm looking everything at once, in order not to be run over?
'Is the door locked? No, it's open as usual. Certainly Rauschenberg has techniques. But the ones he has he disuses, using those he hasn't. (...) Modem art has no need for technique. (We are in the glory of not knowing what we're doing.) So technique, not having to do with the painting has to do with who's looking and who painted. People. Technique is: how are the people? Not how well did they do it, but, as they were saying, fragility.
(He says-and is he speaking of technique? "What do you want, a declaration of love? I take responsibility for competence and hope to have made something hazardous with which we may try ourselves.")
From here on, whenever I speak about sound, I refer to movement.
When I talk about movement, I refer to sound.
where are my eyes and my ears?
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a trans-figur-ation
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And viceversa.
Words sometimes must be seen with other eyes, blinded ones,
“This is not a pipe”, “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”
like objects themselves
to discover their meaning.
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Like a white canvas, where is the end?
a white screen can never be touched. it blinds on the way.
the inevitable fall into one's own colours.
a symphony?
white colour results from white light
a whole rainbow right in front.
can you hear it?
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Everything at once.
my body as a white canvas
a still body
a silent body
an orchestra
a choir
birds
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4' 33''
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so John Cage, you plagiarized Rauschenberg.
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Did I ?
(or maybe it was a birthday present)
Having made the empty canvases
(A canvas is never empty.),
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Rauschenberg became the giver of gifts. Gifts, unespected and unnecessary, are ways of saying Yes to how it is, a holiday. The gifts he gives are not picked up in distant lands but are things we already have (with exceptions, of course: I needed a goat and the ether stuffed birds, since I don't have any, and I needed an attic in order to go through the family things (since we moved away, the relatives write to say: Do you still want them?), and so we are converted to the enjoyment of our possessions.
Converted from what? From wanting what we don't have, art as pained struggle. Setting out one day for a birthday party, I noticed the streets were full of presents. Were he saying something in particular, he would have to focus the painting, as it is he simply focuses himself, and everything, a pair of socks, is appropriate, appropriate to poetry, a poetry of infinite possibilities'.
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John Cage, Silence