Branden Wayne Joseph

Experimentations provides a detailed historical and theoretical analysis of the first three decades of experimental composer John Cage's aesthetic production (ca. 1940-1972). Paying particular attention to Cage's inter- and cross-disciplinary engagements with the visual arts and architecture during this period, the book sheds new light on some of Cage's most controversial and influential innovations, such as the use of noise, chance techniques, indeterminacy, electronic technologies, and computerization, as well as upon lesser known but important ideas and strategies such as transparency, multiplicity, virtuality, and actualization. Ultimately, it traces the development of Cage's avant-garde aesthetic and political project as it transformed from the emulation of historical avant-garde precedents such as futurism and the Bauhaus, to the development of important precedents for the post-World War II movements of happenings and Fluxus, to its ultimate abandonment in the aftermath of problems encountered in the vast, multimedia composition HPSCHD (1967-69).

John Cage in Music, Art, and Architecture

Experimentations

The first detailed exploration of avant-garde composer John Cage’s interactions with art and architecture as a means of understanding the aesthetic and political stakes of his career.

Robert Rauschenberg

An examination of the artistic development of Robert Rauschenberg, focusing on his relationship with John Cage and his role in the making of the American neo-avant-garde.

Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde

Random Order

Tony Conrad

Tony Conrad has significantly influenced cultural developments from minimalism tounderground film, "concept art," postmodern appropriation, and the most sophisticated rockand roll. Creator of the "structural" film, The Flicker, collaborator on Jack Smith'sFlaming Creatures and Normal Love, follower of Henry Flynt's radical anti-art, member of the Theatreof Eternal Music and the first incarnation of The Velvet Underground, and early associate of MikeKelley, Tony Oursler, and Cindy Sherman, Conrad has eluded canonic histories. Yet Beyond the DreamSyndicate does not claim Conrad as a major but under-recognized figure. Neither monograph nor socialhistory, the book takes Conrad's collaborative interactions as a guiding thread by which toinvestigate the contiguous networks and discursive interconnections in 1960s art. Such an approachsimultaneously illuminates and estranges current understandings of the period, redrawing the mapacross medium and stylistic boundaries to reveal a constitutive hybridization at the base of thedecade's artistic development. This exploration of Conrad and his milieu goes beyond thepresentation of a relatively overlooked oeuvre to chart multiple, contestatory regimes of powersimultaneously in play during the pivotal moment of the 1960s. From the sovereign authority invokedby Young's music, to the "paranoiac" politics of Flynt, to the immanent control modeled byConrad's films, each avant-garde project examined reveals an investment within a particularstructure of power and resistance, providing a glimpse into the diversity of the artistic andpolitical stakes that continue to define our time.Branden W. Joseph is Professor of Modern andContemporary Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and aneditor of the journal Grey Room (MIT Press). He is the author of Random Order: Robert Rauschenbergand the Neo-Avant-Garde (MIT Press, 2003.)

Branden Wayne Joseph

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