The Tampa Museum of Art presents John Cage’s 33-1/3 – Performed by Audience on January 28 – May 6, 2012.
One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, John Cage (1912- 1992) created sound and performance works that broke through boundary after boundary. In celebration of his enduring legacy and the 2012 centenary of his birth, the Museum is pleased to present John Cage’s 33-1/3 – Performed by Audience – an interactive installation guest curated by Jade Dellinger.
Conceived in 1969 as an “audience participation” work, John Cage’s original “score” simply stipulated that the gallery be filled with about a dozen record players and two- to three-hundred vinyl records. Museum visitors were encouraged to act as DJs and create a musical mix by playing records freely and thus performing the work.
According to guest curator Jade Dellinger, “when the work was first installed at the University of California in Davis, a local record store graciously volunteered the hundreds of necessary records. However, as Cage never discussed condition or specified titles, the store promptly sent over the most common and undesirable, damaged and utterly unsalable records in their inventory.” Dellinger was inspired by a line from a letter he received in the 1980’s from Cage in which the composer noted that “I am not interested in the names of movements but rather in seeing and making things not seen before.”
As “a tribute and in celebration of Cage’s centennial, the exhibition’s goal is both to honor and reinterpret Cage’s score with the assistance of a few rather special friends. The show aimed to create a broad spectrum of vinyl recordings as source material for visitor-participants to access at the Museum, and a prominent group of visual artists and performers (even a few Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famers) have been invited to submit Top 10 picks or album playlists to fill record bins. The participating visual and performing artists include:
Yoko Ono
Iggy Pop
Graham Nash
David Byrne (Talking Heads)
Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music)
Jack White (The White Stripes)
Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth)
Richie Ramone (The Ramones)
Jad Fair (Half-Japanese)
Alex James (Blur)
Meredith Monk
Terry Allen
Irwin Chusid
Arto Lindsay (DNA & Lounge Lizards)
Blixa Bargeld (Einsturzende Neubauten)
Mike Kelley (Destroy All Monsters)
S.A. Martinez (311)
David Harrington (Kronos Quartet)
Emil Schult (Kraftwerk)
Pauline Oliveros
The Residents
Vito Acconci
The Art Guys
Martin Atkins (Public Image Ltd.)
John Baldessari
Matthew Barney
Christian Marclay
Joan LaBarbara
Jim Rosenquist
Ed Ruscha
William Wegman
John Cage 33-1/3 – Performed by Audience is ©1969 by Henmar Press Inc. Used by permission of C.F. Peters Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Support for the exhibition has been provided by Amoeba Music. Media support has been provided by WMNF. – www.tampamuseum.org
