State Museum of the History of St Petersburg

National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA)

John Cage Foundation (USA)

PRO ARTE Foundation

Co-organizers: Merce Cunningham Foundation (USA), John Cage Foundation (USA)

Partners: Margarete Roeder Gallery (New York), Edition Peters Publishing House

With the support of: the US Embassy in Russia, the U.S.–Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, Gayane Khachaturyan International Foundation, German Titov Library

With the participation of the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Centre

JOHN CAGE. THE SILENT PRESENCE

CURATOR VITALY PATSYUKOV

OPENING: FEBRUARY, 15, 2013 (FRIDAY) AT 16.00

PARALLEL PROGRAM

John Cage is a famous American composer, philosopher, poet, musicologist and artist, who pioneered aleatory music, electronic music and unconventional use of musical instruments. Cage radically changed the perception of music: he was interested in “non-composition” technologies built on the Buddhist principle of non-doing, on using regular noises. John Cage’s ideas largely defined the development of not only music but also visual culture of the post-war avant-garde – representatives of Neo-Dada, Fluxus and New Conceptualism have found the source for their own experiments in his aesthetics. Today critics call Cage one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.

John Cage. The Silent Presence exhibition project, implemented by NCCA in the year of the composer’s centenary in collaboration with the John Cage Foundation (USA), is part of a wider international celebratory program.

The exhibition is dedicated to the works of Cage and his closest associates – scores, graphic arts, audio recordings and video footages including program piece 4’33’’ (4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence), photographs and documentaries about the composer, choreographer Merce Cunningham’s ballet videos and Marcel Duchamp’s drawings to the famous “Large Glass”.

North-West Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts +7 (812) 272 47 33 www.ncca.ru 

PRO ARTE Foundation +7 (812) 2330040 www.proarte.ru

Activity Type :  Music