Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Ralph Lichtensteiger <>]

Dear Wolfgang,

thank you for the background information about "Overpopulation and Art" and the "John Cage and the Squat" Hanau project.

And thanks for the links, all the information on your super website is very helpful. 

In my opinion the relevance of John Cage's thinking on political, social, society/community related affairs was a bit underrepresented in the worldwide John Cage's 100th birthday celebration events in 2012.

It's too bad that there is a tendency to depict John Cage and his work towards easiness, "the funny, sweet oncle with all the strange and funny sound pieces" etc. 

Particularly the establish government controlled institutions (museums and "Kultur" places) paint a rather soft, harmless, nonpolitical and unoffending picture of John Cage's contribution.

I think it is important to deconstruct why institutions have this tendency. The complexity of John Cage's contribution to political and society related topics should have more attention, public focus.

Kind regards,

Ralph Lichtensteiger

http://lichtensteiger.net/artstream.html

On Jan 15, 2013, at 8:38 AM, Wolfgang Sterneck wrote:

Hello,

 "Overpopulation and Art" of John Cage is related to a project we did together with him 

in benefit of a squated autonomous culture-center in Hanau (1991/92),

It's probably  one of Johns most political projects in a direct way. 

(Johns anarchist way of composing / performing / thinking in general is for sure political, but mostly on a more basic and often subliminal way).

The long poem  "Overpopulation and Art" includes passages of letters i wrote to John about the squat and our philosophy behind

(without making clear that these words written originally  by me - anyway it's still a honor for me and the main aspect is to get the visions around ...)

You can find many info on "John Cage and the Squat" here: http://www.sterneck.net/john-cage

There you will find there also 2 articles, which discuss political aspects of Johns work:

- Richard Kostelanetz : The Anarchist Art of John Cage

- Wolfgang Sterneck : John Cage und die Musik der Veränderung

The benefit-project (book+record, 1992)  for the squat included also "Overpopulation and Art".

Years later the musicians Jello Biafra (Ex Dead Kennedys) and Eugene Chadbourne released  their interpretation of parts of "Overpopulation And Art" (focused on the political messages) on "Various ‎– Caged/Uncaged - A Rock/Experimental Homage To John Cage" (2002).

Silence and Change

Wolfgang Sterneck

- * -

www.sterneck.net

www.facebook.com/sterneck

www.flickr.com/photos/sterneck/sets

Am 14.01.2013 um 11:20 schrieb Ralph Lichtensteiger:

Dear Andrew,

thank you for the link to Cage's "Overpopulation and Art".

I did not know that it was part of the Other Minds Audio Archive at archive.org.

This is great, Cage was really ahead of his time....

Kind regards,

Ralph Lichtensteiger

http://lichtensteiger.net/artstream.html

On Jan 13, 2013, at 4:30 PM, Andrew Culver wrote:

I recommend Cage's "Overpopulation and Art" for his beautiful summation on these topics.

A recording is here:  http://archive.org/details/AM_1992_01_28

There is also the film I made with Frank Scheffer which combines a recorded reading with a recording of Ryanji and of course much imagery.

Andrew