Playing John Cage

The Playing John Cage exhibition at the Arnolfini, Bristol, was a bit of a disappointment. I think that I'd had quite high expectations bearing in mind the eminent list of participants, and therefore was set up for disappointment...

There were two pieces which stood out for me. The first was the Carsten Nicolai and Rjoki Ikeda collaborative sound piece which accompanied Takagi Masakatsu's video projection of the Zen garden that so influenced Cage's approach to his work. I wasn't all that taken by the image work, as it was a little more demure than Masakatsu's usual style, but I was impressed by the strength of the aesthetic and the subtlety and power of the accompanying sound. It consisted of very high or very low freqency sound pieces by Nicolai and Ikeda randomly shuffled on an ordinary CD player. While existing at the very edge of perceptibility, the volume of the sounds was such that they dominated the space and formed an ever-present texture on which the rest of the works in the exhibition rested (and had the potential to attract every dog in the quayside area).

I was also very impressed with the subtlety and care involved in Rolf Julius's work, in which tiny speakers emitted tiny sounds, so tiny that you had to get down on your hands and knees in order to hear them. Not being shy, I was on the floor for a little while listening to the gentle sound of running water from sounder so delicate that it could be floated on the surface tension of a cup of water. Successful as this strategy was, it's not just the relationship between the sound of water and the actual water that made this work resonate for me. It was more the intimacy of the relationship with it, and the potential for dreaming that it offered; like having beautiful secrets whispered in your ear.

Much of the rest of the work in the show was depressingly predictable, or as in Kaffe Matthews's encouragements for us to 'simply sit and listen', depressingly slight. Frankly, I've heard that one before, and it wasn't very good the first time.

The exception to this was Michael Prime's piece which amplified the electrical activity of mushrooms growing, to creating a buzzing ambience in an aquarium-like space that spoke of objectification, contamination and the unseen malevolent potential of nature. You can find material by Michael Prime at Die Stadt music.