ACTION III :
JOHN CAGE - 'SPEECH' (1955)
AS PART OF FRIEZE LOS ANGELES' 'AGAINST THE EDGE'
ECHOI, PERFORMERS
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Doors at 7:00 PM, Performance at 7:30 PM
Merry-Go-Round Building at the Santa Monica Pier
1550 Appian Way | Santa Monica, CA | 90401
Doors at 7:00 PM, Performance at 7:30 PM
Merry-Go-Round Building at the Santa Monica Pier
1550 Appian Way | Santa Monica, CA | 90401
Walter Hopps, "Action" flyer, 1955. © Estate of Craig Kauffman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Installation shot of "Action" on the Santa Monica Pier (1955). Photograph by Walter Hopps.
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ECHOI
SISSÒN, (RADIO)
Hamza WALKER (RADIO)
Orion CARLOTO (RADIO)
Ariana REINES (NEWSREADER)
Arman NAFÉEI (NEWSREADER)
Isabelle ALBUQUERQUE (RADIO)
Ariana PAPADEMETROPOULOS (RADIO)
Jonathan HEPFER (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR)
SISSÒN, (RADIO)
Hamza WALKER (RADIO)
Orion CARLOTO (RADIO)
Ariana REINES (NEWSREADER)
Arman NAFÉEI (NEWSREADER)
Isabelle ALBUQUERQUE (RADIO)
Ariana PAPADEMETROPOULOS (RADIO)
Jonathan HEPFER (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR)
"Well, you know how I adjusted to that problem of the radio in the environment - very much as the primitive people adjusted to the animals which frightened them, and which probably as you say, were intrusions, they drew pictures of them on their caves. And so I simply made a piece using radios. Now, whenever I hear radios, even a single one, not just twelve at a time...I think, well, they're just playing my piece!" (John Cage)
DESCRIPTION OF EVENT:
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Los Angeles curator Walter Hopps organized his first major group exhibition ‘Action’ (1955) in the Santa Monica Pier’s Merry-Go-Round building. Hopps wrapped the carousel in fabric and suspended paintings by a number of abstract painters including Sonia Gechtoff, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Jay De Feo and Richard Diebenkorn. Unusually, Hopps also included a musical component to the exhibition, playing recorded jazz music and the carousel’s soundtrack as well as his own renditions of John Cage's 'Imaginary Landscape No. 4' for twelve radios.
As part of Frieze Los Angeles' ‘Against the Edge’ program, Jonathan Hepfer, Artistic Director of Monday Evening Concerts, has devised a program of music to play in homage to Hopps’s exhibition. On Thursday, February 16th at 7:30 PM, Hepfer and a cast of notable figures from the worlds of visual art, literature and music will perform John Cage’s Speech, composed the same year as the Hopps exhibition took place. (Monday Evening Concerts, or MEC, was founded in 1939 by Peter Yates, music critic for Arts & Architecture magazine.) To read the complete text for MEC Action 3 at the Merry-Go-Round Building, click here. |