John Cage - Mail Art project

John Cage mail art… supposing.

for the first hundredth anniversary of his birth … every process suffers partial or total interferences to work of case… C.G.
Jung

John Milton Cage (Los Angeles, 5th September 1912 - New York, 12th August 1992), is an American musician, among few of those that deeply succeeded to influence European music. His participations in Europe, among '54, '57 and ‘58, has aroused in fact the immediate interest of the musical vanguards that immediately perceive what is new, disturbing and stimulating in the music of the American composer.

He studies before with Adolph Weiss, disciple of Schönberg, and then with Schönberg himself. From the beginning his compositions have a clearly experimental character. In the thirties he begins a tie both sentimental that artistic with Merce Cunningham, choreographer precursor of the post-modern dance, that goes on for all the life. Not meaning here to circumscribe the complex artistic and musical vicissitude of Cage. This initiative wants instead to place the accent on the concept of chance - alea - that from the fifties onwards breaks into his artistic evolution.
Influenced from Zen Buddhism and from the philosopher Daisetz Teitaro, Cage supports the principle of the intentionality in the artistic composition and he tries to free the sounds from every expressiveness, introducing both in the composition that in the execution the concept of vagueness. He tries therefore to put together the sounds in a quite random way and, in order to make it, he uses different procedures.

As an example, in the 4 books of Music of Changes (1951), all that is written is fruit of the launch of the 3 I Ching coins, or book of changes. And we know that in the I Ching is worried exclusively of the accidental aspect of the events. The nexus cause-effect, so glad to the Occidentals, passes unnoticed. In the I Ching we have the synchronism that is the opposite of the causality.
That means, while for the western thought the importance is placed on the sequence of the events, here we find ourselves in front of a thought that first of all places the accent on the coincidence of the events in a given time and a determined space. The events happen just at that time, because they are interdependent among them as they are interdependent from who observes them. The vagueness of Cage is never absolute and his poetics becomes part in that cultural trend that crack the principles of the western thought and reveals its failure.
Then, it’s impossible do not think to Tristan Tzara and to the movement dada for the absolute preference conceded to the game and the accidental combination of words and objects, or - just to put a name - do not remember the dripping, the color left to drip on the picture, of Jackson Pollock.

Angela Caporaso

Nb: nothing than written can be reproduced without authorization.

Technique: free
Format: free, max a4
dead: 7/30/2011

Participation: free; the sent works will not be given back.
Important: only works on envelope or postcard; every other support will not be accepted.
All the works will be published to the following address:

http://www.johncagemailart.altervista.org/

angela.caporaso@inwind.it

The accidental misfortunes of the shipping, the chance encounters of unknown distances at last determine the peculiarity of the work became part of the plan.

Send the works to

Angela Caporaso -
via Roma 117-
81100 Caserta -
Italia