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For this video, with a playing time of over two hours, dedicated to the memory of composer, writer, artist, anarchist and mushroom connoisseur John Cage (1912-1992), over 250 hours of rough footage were recorded, as well as 200 hours of 'found sounds' DAT-recordings. Interesting fact is that Henning Lohner, who already has a number of productions about music to his name, selected and therefore composed in the manner of Cage. Everything revolves around the notion of coincidence, and it is this which shows Cage's anarchical attitude: he does not think any one sound is more valid than another as all sounds are interesting and consequently usable when composing. Any form of hierarchy was foreign to him, and one of the ways in which he determined his choice of material was by consulting the Chinese oracle book the I Ching (the Book of Changes). He was deeply interested in the principle of continuous change; but the quality of the answer given by the I Ching depends on the quality of the questions put to it. Cage developed a subtle system of asking questions and called it manipulations of coincidence or chance operations. Aren't the notions of 'change' and 'chaos' to be found almost side by side in the dictionary? How does one choose and select anything from the ever-growing range of sounds and images? This is how the video starts. Cage was interviewed shortly before he died and he talks about sound, silence, music, art, life as he already had so often. In everything he says his Zen Buddhist world view is apparent. For example: 'The world is full of sounds and if you accept this you open yourself up to listening to and enjoying them. You can also fight against it, escape complex reality and try and impose some order and structure. Enjoy Chaos.' Curiously, a brain expert pops up regularly to address the complex organisation of our brain. In the brain, too, many things happen simultaneously. How do ordering, structuring or editing processes take place? An animal head is chopped into pieces by a butcher while the brains are put into a plastic container carefully, as a delicacy. Later, in a Paris market, we follow a conversation on the preparation of a calf's head. A remarkable number of inconspicuous places all around the world is shown: motorways, crossroads, stations,markets, watermills and the desert, from New Mexico to Friesland, from Japan to Paris. Zapping through the world, 'from jazz to Beethoven' like Frank Zappa says. What about the video's title? Early on the playwright Heiner Müller speaks and he puts it into these very apt words: "Cage is the revenge of the dead native American Indians on European music." Not until much further on the interview with Müller is continued: "culture comes from the oppressed, the displaced and has therefore become the unconscious; which rebels, and is the Indian element of Cage." We are treated to many observations worthy of consideration by such people as Noam Chomsky, William Forsythe, Alison Knowles, Yehudi Menuhin, Yoko Ono, Richard Serra, Iannis Xenakis, Merce Cunningham, Ellsworth Kelly, Heiner Müller, Dennis Hopper and Frank Zappa. Some of them tell about their first meeting with Cage - fragmentarily cut - and his influence on their music. There is too much material to go into and choose from: everything is equally valuable. We end with a performance by Cage and Henny Lohner at the Checkpoint Invalidenstrasse in Berlin on August 1, 1990. A variation on his famous 4'3" from 1952 (performed again by Cage on the streets of New York and recorded by Nam June Paik), in which we listen to the sounds of the environment in order to experience them as music.
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Ingrid van Santen
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Scenario: Holger Hof, Henning Lohner, Camera: Van Theodore Calson, Light: Darren Rydstrom, Editing: Sven Fleck, Music: John Cage, Leader of Production: Peter Lohner, Production: Lohner Film- & Musikproduktion, CONHS prod.
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