April 14

DAY X

Ideology and the Individual

0. More about Cage. "Form is no form", non clinging: listening to independent sounds, not in context. The purpose of music according to the Indian "master". Imitating Nature in its mode of operation; a purposeful purposelessness or a purposeless play. Tools: chance operations; I CHING and lists of possibilities. Dissociating the composer from the product - avoiding his subjectivity.
Cage's influence; his audience.

1. Dada. What is it ? Cage's Western roots. Ethics and aesthetics. Tristan Tzara and Huelsenbeck expressing two tendencies in the movement. Experimentalism, anti-art, concept art and their roots in the intellectual/social unrest at the beginning of the century. Irrationality as intellectual anarchism. Randomness. The absurd (Ionesco).

The revolt against the kultur. The liberation of the individual - dada as a moral stand. The many branches of dada.

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