MERCE CUNNINGHAM PERFORMS STILLNESS (IN THREE MOVEMENTS) TO JOHN CAGE’S COMPOSITION 4'33"
with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 april 2007 (six performances, six films), 2008 installation of 6 films (app. 5' each)
FROM NOVEMBER 25 TO DECEMBER 6 2009
Opening Wednesday, November 25 6pm-8pm
This installation is made up of six different films focusing on Merce Cunningham’s interpretation of STILLNESS, a choreography based on the composition 4’33’’ by John Cage, first presented in New York in 1952. The now historic collaboration of Cage and Cunningham is part of the long dialogue they developed over the years in an exploration of dance, music, time and space.
The camera focuses on Cunningham, sitting on a chair in various attitudes, interrupted only by one other performer, Trevor Carlson. Each performance was filmed from different angles and presented on screens allowing Cunningham’s image to appear in its actual size. The work is silent, apart from the sounds recorded during the performance (the creaking of the chair, the noise of the Manhattan traffic) and the sound of the projectors.
Tacita Dean gives an account of the emancipation of time and movement from a rhythm imposed from outside, to be inscribed in the composition formed by the images from the six screens.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Canterbury in 1965, she now lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1992, and started off as a draughtswoman before working in a number of media (film, photography, painting…). The 16 mm films she makes are the most revelatory of her work. Their characteristics: a fixed camera filming long sequence shots that create an impression of motionlessness in a setting that is in fact moving.
Tacita Dean’s work questions production mechanisms which she sees as revealing the tricks of cinema. So far she has made more than forty 16mm films, and across the world around fifty solo exhibitions have been devoted to her work between 1994 and 2009.
Thanks are due to the Marian Goodman Gallery.
Coproduction Le Festival d'Automne à Paris and Le CENTQUATRE.
